THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


LETTERS 
TO  TEACHERS 

AND  OTHER  PAPERS  OF  THE  HOUR 


By 
HARTLEY  BURR  ALEXANDER 

PROFESSOR    OF    PHILOSOPHY 
UNIVERSITY   OF  NEBRASKA 


Incipit  Vita  Nova 


CHICAGO  LONDON   • 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1919 


Copyright  by 

The  Open   Court    Publishing  Company 

1919 


L3 


To  my  sister 
CHARLOTTE 


iPOQOOO 


PREFACE 

IT  is,  doubtless,  needless  to  say  that  the  papers 
here  collected  are  frankly  journalistic,  frankly 
propaganda.  They  were  written  during  war- 
time, and  while  directed  to  the  internal  condition 
rather  than  the  external  affairs  of  our  nation,  they 
are  influenced  and  inspired  by  the  omnipresent  fact 
of  the  international  catastrophe.  The  problem  with 
which  they  deal  is  the  problem  of  reconstruction 
where  it  is  most  fundamental,  and  that  is  in  the 
education  of  the  American  citizen;  for  the  economic 
and  social  difficulties  which  today  we  face  can  find 
no  lasting  solution  except  it  be  in  a  state  of  mind,  a 
national  state  of  mind,  which  shall  unite  our  citizen- 
ship in  a  unified  purpose ;  and  this  it  is  the  business 
of  education  to  define  and  achieve.  The  issue  is 
sufficiently  important  to  demand  journalism,  to 
justify  propaganda. 

Most  of  the  papers  here  reprinted  were  originally 
addressed  to  the  people  of  Nebraska,  but  they  deal 
with  problems  which  are  local  and  national  in  the 
same  sense,  so  that  their  particular  context  ought 
not  to  prevent  their  general  consideration.  The 
title  series  was  first  published  in  the  Nebraska  State 
Journal  (Lincoln),  April- July,  1918,  under  the 
heading,   "Letters  to  Nebraska  Teachers."     Other 


PREFACE  VI 

papers  in  the  collection  appeared  in  the  Mid-West 
Quarterly,  in  School  and  Society,  and  in  The 
Nation.  The  paper  entitled  "The  Ballot"  has  not 
previously  been  published. 

Lincoln,  Nebr.,  April  9,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

Page 
I     LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

i    Life's  Adventure  3 

ii    The  School  and  the  Commonwealth 13 

iii    The  School  and  the  Community 23 

iv    The  Schoolyard  33 

V    The  Curriculum  45 

vi    The  Humanities  55 

vii    History  65 

viii    The  Bible  in  the  Schools 75 

ix    Nature  and  Science 87 

X    Crafts  and  Vocations 99 

xi     The  Life  of  Youth 109 

xii     Poetry  and  Pageantry „ 117 

xiii    The  Age  of  Romance 127 

xiv    The  School  System 137 

XV    The  Teacher's  Profession 147 

xvi    The  Teacher's  Life 157 

II     FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY 

169 

III  COMMUNITY  PAGEANTRY 

193 

IV  EDUCATION  IN  TASTE 

205 

V     EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY: 

i    The  Failure  of  the  Intellectuals 227 

ii    The  Ballot  235 

iii     Pro  Fide  245 


LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 


LETTER  I 

LIFE'S  ADVENTURE 

I  WHO  write  this  am  Nebraska  born.  Most  of 
my  education,  too,  was  given  me  by  Nebraska, 
where  I  attended  grade  and  high  schools  and  finally 
the  state  university,  in  which  I  have  now  passed  ten 
years  of  my  mature  life  as  a  teacher.  The  public 
schools  of  Nebraska,  grade  and  high  and  collegiate, 
form  a  single  system,  having  for  their  purpose  the 
education  of  the  up-growing  citizens  of  the  state.  It 
is  of  these  schools  and  of  this  education  that  I  pro- 
pose to  write,  addressing  the  public  school  teachers 
of  the  state,  the  great  majority  of  whom  are,  like 
myself,  native  born  and  educated  in  Nebraska;  and 
I  trust  that  what  I  shall  have  to  say  will  be  of  in- 
terest, also,  to  teachers  whose  work  falls  in  other 
parts  of  the  nation,  where  the  problems  of  life,  and 
of  education  as  a  part  of  life,  do  not,  it  appears  to 
me,  radically  differ  from  those  which  I  perceive  in 
my  own  environment.  I  shall  hope  also  to  reach 
citizens  who  are  not  teachers  by  profession;  for  I 
am  sure  that  all  good  citizens  realize  that  the  object 
of  public  education  is  to  so  train  its  youth  that  they 
will  live  honorably  and  well,  and  make  the  com- 
monwealth pleasanter  and  more  habitable  for  man- 

3 


4  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

kind ;  and  I  am  sure  that  so  great  a  concern  as  this 
cannot  fail  of  their  attention.  In  the  long  run,  citi- 
zen and  teacher  and  youth  have  one  common  aim — 
to  make  and  keep  human  life  wholesome  and  sane 
and  in  the  highest  sense  happy. 

I  should  like  to  speak  first  of  all  of  those  things 
in  Nebraska  that  I  cherish.  I  have  reached  that 
age  when  a  man  begins  to  realize  that  memories 
are  as  rich  in  life's  portion  as  are  hopes,  and  that 
what  is  dear  out  of  the  past  must  color  and  warm 
all  that  is  to  be  dear  in  the  future.  Life  is,  to  be 
sure,  a  kind  of  adventure,  and  our  best  prayer  for 
each  is  that  his  life  may  prove  to  be  a  beautiful 
adventure ;  yet  we  should  not  forget  that  this  adven- 
ture of  living  has  an  end,  even  as  it  had  a  beginning, 
and  that  the  value  of  a  life  is  to  be  found  in  what  it 
is  as  a  whole,  not  merely  in  the  expectations  and 
desires  which  happen  to  engross  its  present  hours. 
As  men  grow  into  maturity  they  begin  to  realize 
that  the  true  gold  which  they  have  amassed  is  their 
treasured  memories;  and  realizing  this  they  be- 
come the  more  solicitous  for  their  children,  know- 
ing that  the  only  fortune  which  no  change  can  take 
from  their  heirs  will  be  the  memories  that  live  on 
into  the  after  years. 

The  main  part  of  the  years  of  my  boyhood  were 
spent  in  a  country  village  of  southeastern  Nebraska 
— just  such  a  village  as  scores  of  others  which  today 
dot  the  map  of  the  state.  My  earliest  recollection 
of  it  is  of  a  place  bare  and  windswept,  open  alike 


LIFE'S  ADVENTURE  S 

to  the  unrelenting  suns  of  summer  and  the  unre- 
mitting gales  of  winter;  and  there  seemed  (so  my 
memory  reports)  something  quite  audacious  in  the 
group  of  crude  frame  buildings,  standing  unrelieved 
and  nude  in  the  midst  of  miles  of  almost  treeless 
prairie.  Today,  this  village  is  nearly  hidden  in 
summertime  by  the  luxuriant  green  of  its  leafage, 
and  the  country  round  about  is  one  continuous 
chequer  of  hedgerow  and  field  and  grove;  nor  can 
winter  at  its  whitest  take  away  the  impression  of 
snug  comfort  that  has  changed  the  whole  face  of 
nature. 

It  was  with  this  change  from  a  raw  pioneer  town 
to  the  snug  trading  hamlet  of  a  well-seated  farming 
community  that  I  grew  up;  and  the  Nebraska  I 
know  best  of  all  is,  I  suspect,  the  iSTebraska  of  the 
transformation  from  virgin  prairies  into  cultivated 
farms — a  Nebraska  of  some  hardships,  but  of  a 
great  adventure  done  once  for  all;  for  the  prairies 
which  I  knew  as  a  boy  were  just  such  as  they  had 
been,  for  century  upon  century,  since  the  great  ice 
had  melted  away  to  the  north,  leaving  on  them  the 
strewn  gravel  in  which  I  used  to  find  onyx  and 
agate;  and  the  farms  as  they  are  now  are  surely 
much  what  will  be  through  as  many  centuries  more, 
perhaps,  until  a  new  age  of  ice  comes  again  to 
drive  away  their  summers.  The  transformation 
was  surely  a  very  wonderful  period,  and  I  am  glad 
that  I  have  lived  in  that  good  time. 

Of  course  I  did  not  realize  all  this,  as  a  boy — 


6  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

what  boy  could?  But  I  felt  its  stir,  none  the  less. 
There  was  always  a  thrill  in  seeing  the  prairie 
broken,  the  horses  even  in  double  team  tugging  and 
sweating,  and  the  long  ribbons  of  sod  turning  in 
neat  parallels.  There  was  beauty,  too,  in  the  fires 
that  swept  through  the  dried  grass  of  autumns, 
tanged  with  danger,  and  illuminating  the  hills  at 
night  for  miles  around.  Then  there  were  tree- 
plantings  and  house-raisings  and  auctions  and  busy 
market  days — all  occasions  when  folk  gathered  to 
the  enterprise  with  a  hearty  vacation  spirit,  natur- 
ally attractive  to  boys;  while,  from  another  angle, 
there  were  old-timers  with  stories  of  freighting  days 
and  Indian  fights.  Nor  was  the  "wild  west"  so  far 
remote;  every  year  cowboy  traders  came  through 
with  droves  of  half-broken  mustang  and  broncho 
ponies,  and  not  a  few  exhibitions  of  hardy  horse- 
manship ;  while  hardly  a  season  passed  without  at 
least  one  encampment  of  Indians  journeying  on 
their  endless  tribal  visits  from  reservation  to  reser- 
vation. But  most  affecting  of  all  to  the  imagination 
were  the  prairie-schooners  of  the  new  settlers — 
streams  of  them,  spring  and  autumn,  drifting  west- 
ward, westward,  into  their  land  of  promise. 

With  other  boys  I  used  to  explore  the  country ; 
wandering  up  and  down  the  banks  of  the  wooded 
Nemaha;  playing  at  Indian  with  bows  of  ash,  ar- 
rows of  reed,  and  spears  of  dried  sunflower  stalks; 
searching  for  occasional  arrowheads  and  flints  in 
the  gravel  beds;  or  gathering  treasures   from  the 


LIFE'S  ADVENTURE  7 

limestone  quarries,  abundant  with  fossil  relics  of 
the  time  when  as  yet  this  land  was  not  and  where 
Nebraska  is  was  the  teeming  life  of  old  Devonian 
seas.  With  other  boys,  too,  I  went  to  the  village 
schools — old-fashioned,  I  suspect  the  teachers  of 
our  day  would  call  them,  or  perhaps  old  fogy ;  cer- 
tainly, as  I  recall,  grammar  and  arithmetic  were 
regarded  by  the  pupils  as  the  real  tests  of  their 
mettle,  while  spelling-down  appealed  to  our  sporting 
instincts.  I  learned  a  trade,  too,  as  did  many  of 
the  others,  and  planned  and  hoped  with  them  for  the 
great  day  when — like  the  movers  in  the  prairie 
schooners — I  should  set  out  to  discover  the  wide 
world  beyond  the  prairie  horizon  and  make  un- 
claimed lands  my  own. 

Most  of  the  boys  who  were  my  companions  grew 
up  to  fulfill  their  hope  of  adventuring  out  into  un- 
tried frontiers  or  strange  lands,  and  today  they  are 
scattered  in  many  a  far  place.  I,  also,  departed, 
and  for  a  decade  dwelt  in  distant  cities;  but  unlike 
many,  I  returned  again  to  my  native  soil,  and  with 
I  believe  a  new  veneration  for  what  is  beautiful  in 
Nebraska.  For  I  have  discovered  that  those  beauties 
which  most  endure  in  human  experience  are  not 
to  be  found  in  the  novel  and  spectacular  moments 
of  the  traveler,  but  in  familiar  and  intimate  things, 
and  especially  in  those  impressions  which  come  to 
childhood  and  youth,  when  the  mind  is  eager  with 
curiosity  and  fresh  with  hope.  To  me  the  prairies 
of  Nebraska  are  wonderfully  beautiful,  with  their 


8  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

broad  curves  and  modulating  distances.  I  love,  too, 
the  animation  of  the  cornfields,  stirred  by  cruising 
winds;  the  sudden  thunderstorm  with  its  avalanche 
of  lightning  and  the  impetuous  rain  sweeping  up 
after  the  great  billow  of  cloud  is  the  very  raiment 
of  majesty;  and  I  think  I  have  never  seen  such  stars 
as  ours,  over  the  whole  dome  of  heaven,  of  a  win- 
ter's night.  Nor  can  I  ever  forget  that  once-seen 
sunset  sky,  gold  and  burnished  copper  from  circum- 
ference to  circumference,  which  will  be  for  me  for- 
ever the  image  of  the  sublimities  of  the  judgment 
day. 

My  eight-year-old,  like  his  father,  was  born  in 
Nebraska,  and  in  the  same  city.  It  gives  me  a  cer- 
tain satisfaction  to  recognize  this  continuity  of  gen- 
erations, and  to  hope  that  it  may  go  on  in  the  future. 
I  hear  his  shout  of  joy  at  play;  I  watch  him  trudge 
off  to  school ;  and  I  think  of  him — as  I  suppose  other 
parents  think  of  their  children — as  gathering  day 
by  day  that  store  of  vivid  impressions  which  are 
one  day  to  come  home  to  him  as  a  precious  treasure. 
It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  a  part  of  the  kinship 
with  his  father  which  he  will  some  time  realize  will 
be  that  deepest  of  all  comradeships  which  rests  upon 
a  common  understanding  of  the  same  earth  and  sky 
with  all  the  companioning  changes  of  nature.  It 
is  out  of  such  common  understanding  that  love  of 
home  and  love  of  country  grow  to  mean  so  much 
to  men. 

Of  course  I  recognize  that  the  Nebraska  he  will 


LIFE'S  ADVENTURE  9 

know  cannot  be  quite  the  Nebraska  that  I  have 
known.  For  instance,  where  I  as  a  boy,  was  inter- 
ested in  ponies  and  mover's  wagons,  he  is  interested 
in  automobiles  and  railroad  trains;  and  I  have  dis- 
covered from  his  chance  comments  that  the  school- 
room for  him  has  a  color  and  tone  different  from 
those  which  cling  to  mine  out  of  the  old  days.  But 
more  than  all,  I  am  sure  that  he  will  never  know 
the  exuberance  and  adventurous  hopefulness  which 
belonged  to  the  pioneer  days,  when  everything  was 
to  be  done,  and  nothing  was  complete,  and  the  whole 
face  of  nature  was  to  be  changed  to  suit  men's  new 
needs.  That  was  a  great  enterprise  which  our 
fathers  took  in  hand;  and  they  performed  it  well, 
and  once  for  all ;  so  that  what  Nebraska  now  is  many 
generations  will  continue  to  see  it.  Nor  could  so 
great  a  deed  have  been  achieved  without  inspiration 
in  the  souls  of  them  that  did  it,  and  a  kind  of  glory 
enveloping  their  lives. 

What  will  take  its  place — have  you  never  asked 
the  question — what  will  take  the  place  of  the  great 
adventure  of  the  pioneers,  to  put  in  the  souls  of  their 
children  the  old  fire  and  the  old  enthusiasm  that 
seem  so  precious  to  us  as  we  look  back?  It  was 
good,  we  can  see,  for  them  to  be  building  a  pleas- 
ant habitation  for  their  heirs  in  the  land ;  they  lived 
creative  lives,  stalwart  and  honorable,  but  is  it  so 
good  for  their  children's  children?  Are  these  simply 
to  inhabit  the  pleasant  house,  making  no  addition? 
Could  such  a  life  be  a  good  life,  inheriting  all,  creat- 


10  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

ing  nothing?  Or  are  there  still  such  tasks  to  per- 
form, here  in  Nebraska,  as  shall  test  the  mettle  of 
the  best  of  them,  and  give  them  all  that  buoyancy 
of  soul  which  comes  but  when  life  is  touched  with  the 
noble  generosity  of  fine  deeds  to  do?  To  the  minds 
of  all  citizens  such  questions  must  come  at  times; 
but  most  of  all  they  will  occur  and  recur  to  teachers 
and  parents,  for  it  is  teachers  and  parents  who  most 
fully  realize  that  the  one  true  heritage  which  a  pass- 
ing generation  can  leave  to  its  youth  is  a  noble  task. 
I  have  no  qualms  as  to  this  with  respect  to  my 
boy.  My  life  has  been  cast  in  a  great  generation; 
but  his,  if  he  be  spared,  will  be  lived  in  a  greater. 
Its  achievement  will  not,  I  believe,  be  of  the  char- 
acter of  those  which  have  made  my  generation 
great ;  marvels  of  physical  achievement,  such  as  the 
mastery  of  earth  and  sea  and  air  by  machines,  the 
uniting  of  the  seas  by  great  canals,  the  discovery 
of  Earth's  two  poles,  and  here  the  transformation 
of  the  great  North  American  wilderness  into  civ- 
ilized states,  uniting  in  amity  men  of  all  nations. 
But  the  next  generation  will  have  set  for  it  tasks 
more  stupendous  than  these,  pertaining  not  to  me- 
chanical and  physical  but  to  human  and  spiritual 
problems.  The  most  terrible  of  all  wars  began  in 
1914  and  at  this  writing  is  not  yet  ended.  This  war 
has  shaken  human  civilization  to  its  foundations;  it 
has  destroyed  cities  and  devastated  nations;  but  of 
more  lasting  significance  are  the  deeper  destructions 
of  men's  political  and  economic  institutions  and  the 


LIFE'S  ADVENTURE  11 

more  harrowing  devastations  of  men's  souls.  The 
secret  of  sane  living  must  be  rediscovered  by  the 
next  generation,  the  world  must  be  reorganized  for 
a  better  and  purer  and  nobler  race  of  men;  nor  is 
there  a  phase  of  social  or  intellectual  life  that  will 
not  have  to  be  renewed  and  reillumined  by  the  men 
and  women  of  the  future. 

I  watch  my  son  trudge  off  to  school,  here  in  Ne- 
braska, and  I  am  glad  in  the  hope  that  he  may  play 
a  man's  part  in  that  great  task.  I  have  a  feeling,  no 
doubt  partly  a  bias  for  my  native  soil,  that  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  this  great  west,  so  lately  virgin 
sod  and  still  shining  with  the  generous  glamour  of 
the  spirit  of  the  pioneers,  should  be  well  qualified 
for  a  great  part  in  the  great  task.  I  realize,  of 
course,  that  this  qualification  cannot  be  merely  one 
of  natural  advantages  or  of  inherited  spirit;  that  in 
addition  there  must  be  the  soundest  and  most  genu- 
ine education  which  state  and  parents  can  afford, 
or  by  thought  and  care  find  out.  I  am  convinced, 
too,  that  our  schools  and  the  whole  commonwealth 
whose  ideals  they  reflect  have  not  yet  risen  to  the 
measure  of  this  opportunity  or  of  the  hour  and  of 
the  duty  which  is  theirs.  Further,  I  believe  that 
the  surest  means  of  reaching  not  merely  the  schools, 
but  even  more  the  public  of  the  commonwealth, 
who  must  be  reached  if  a  true  conception  of  educa- 
tion is  to  be  attained,  is  through  the  teachers  in 
these  schools — the  teachers  of  Nebraska,  of  all 
America.    Therefore  I  am  addressing  to  them  these 


12  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

letters  in  the  hope  that  what  I  have  to  say  may  seem 
worth  consideration  and  inspire  discussion  and  lead 
— in  some  better  form  than  I  can  suggest — to  action. 
For  it  is  to  action  that  we  are  called;  even  as  our 
fathers  were  called  to  the  great  task  of  redeeming 
a  wilderness,  even  as  our  children  must  be  called 
anew  to  regenerate  the  nations,  so  we,  in  our  day, 
are  summoned  to  prepare  the  way  for  them,  train- 
ing their  bodies  and  opening  their  minds  to  vision, 
— our  part  in  the  eternal  deed  of  human  progress, 
O  Adventurers ! 


LETTER  II 

THE   SCHOOL  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH 

THE  States  of  the  American  union  have  each 
their  own  sovereignty.  No  doubt  the  twentieth 
century  American,  with  his  strong  sense  of  the  cen- 
tral nation,  has  grown  away  from  the  intense  state 
patriotism  of  the  eadier  years  of  the  republic.  To  a 
considerable  degree  he  has  even  lost  his  feeling  for 
the  federal  nature  of  our  constitution.  Particularly 
in  the  newer  commonwealths,  with  their  migrant 
populations  and  uncertainty  of  tradition,  it  is  easy 
for  the  citizen  to  focus  his  attention  upon  the 
national  aspects  of  his  citizenship — upon  the  flag 
and  the  imperial  grandeur  of  our  domain  and  upon 
the  high  statecraft  of  Congress  and  the  White 
House — rather  than  to  permit  it  to  become  absorbed 
in  the  less  showy  manifestations  of  his  local  sov- 
ereignty. And  yet  each  commonwealth  of  the 
United  States  is  a  sovereign,  and  exercises  sovereign 
rights,  and  in  a  sovereign  manner  determines  the 
destinies  of  its  citizens.  Nor  is  there  another  single 
feature  in  which  this  sovereignty  is  exerted  with 
so  much  force  and  significance  for  human  life  as  in 
the  schools — those  free  public  schools  which  are  the 
mainstay  of  all  free  human  society.     Assuredly,  in 

13 


14  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  support  of  such  an  institution  the  citizen  of  any 
commonwealth  may  feel  that  he  is  furthering  the 
ends  of  the  truest  statecraft  and  manifesting  the 
most  enduring  patriotism. 

In  democracies  the  sovereign  is  the  people.  But 
a  people  can  be  sovereign  only  when  it  understands 
the  nature  and  duties  of  sovereignty.  It  is  the  first 
principle  of  public  education  that  it  shall  secure 
this  understanding;  and  the  free  schools  of  the 
commonwealth  are,  therefore,  the  final  fortification 
of  its  democratic  rights.  The  two  great  institutions 
upon  which  Americanism  rests  are  the  ballot  and  the 
public  schools,  and  the  latter  are  the  true  prepara- 
tion for  the  former.  When,  therefore,  in  the  order- 
ing of  American  institutions,  the  organization  and 
conduct  of  the  schools  are  left  in  the  hands  of  the 
several  states,  this  is  the  truest  recognition  not  only 
of  their  proper  sovereignties,  but  also  of  the  fact 
that  the  sovereign  power  of  the  nation  as  a  whole 
is  the  creation  and  summation  of  these  state  sov- 
ereignties. It  is  also  a  pledge  of  confidence  of  the 
states  in  one  another  that  each  may  be  relied  upon 
to  broaden  and  preserve  the  conceptions  of  liberty 
and  justice  and  human  right  which  form  the  bond 
and  cement  of  our  national  unity — and  the  proud  soul 
of  our  Americanism. 

By  far  the  largest  single  item  in  Nebraska's  an- 
nual budget  (and  doubtless  this  is  true  of  most  of 
our  commonwealths)  is  the  educational  expenditure. 
This  is  as  it  should  be,  but  it  should  be  so  primarily 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH      15 

for  the  reason  that  the  schools  of  Nebraska  are  the 
safeguards  of  her  democratic  institutions,  and  hence 
of  the  free  hfe  of  the  whole  community.  The 
schools  exist  for  the  betterment  of  the  life  of  the 
state  as  a  whole,  and  therefore  of  the  United  States 
as  a  whole — this  is  the  first  principle  upon  which, 
in  a  truly  American  education,  all  other  educational 
principles  must  rest.  The  tax  which  the  school  sys- 
tem imposes  upon  the  community  is  justified  by  the 
returns  which  the  schools  make  in  the  preservation 
of  the  community  and  in  its  betterment,  and  by 
nothing  else.  In  brief,  the  first  aim  of  public  edu- 
cation is  to  train  qualified  citizens. 

This  principle  must  not  be  applied  in  a  narrowly 
political  sense,  as  teachers  are  sometimes  inclined 
to  apply  it.  It  does  not  mean  an  intensive  concen- 
tration upon,  say,  American  history  and  civics,  im- 
portant as  these  are.  Rather,  it  means  the  cultiva- 
tion of  a  true  liberalism  as  the  core  of  all  our  school- 
ing— grade,  high  school,  and  college — and  the  dis- 
semination of  this  liberalism  among  the  greatest 
possible  number  of  our  youth.  Liberalism  is  the 
one  essential  qualification  for  the  citizen  of  a  democ- 
racy; and  what  we  mean  by  democratic  equality  is 
the  opportunity — nay,  the  duty — of  every  citizen 
to  share  in  this  essential.  Free  education  must  first 
of  all  be  liberal  education ;  that  is  the  starting-point 
of  our  philosophy. 

In  later  letters  (indeed,  it  shall  be  my  central 
theme)  I  shall  endeavor  to  explain  in  detail  what  I 


16  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

regard  as  the  proper  schooling  of  a  democratic  lib- 
eral. Here  I  shall  but  seek  to  give  a  broad  con- 
ception of  what  qualities  in  the  man  a  liberal  educa- 
tion must  cultivate.  And  these,  I  should  say,  are 
a  love  and  understanding  of  truth  and  virtue  and 
beauty.  Love  of  truth  means  honesty  with  one's 
self  as  well  as  frankness  with  one's  fellow — "to 
thine  own  self  be  true  .  .  .  thou  canst  not  then 
be  false  to  any  man" — and  it  means  this  for  the  sake, 
most  of  all,  of  the  great  gain  that  comes  from  free 
human  intercourse.  The  value  of  free  speech  and 
of  the  free  press  about  which  we  say  so  much  is 
directly  dependent  upon  the  honesty  and  truth-lov- 
ing spirit  of  society;  without  this  spirt,  there  is  no 
freedom.  Love  of  virtue — the  second  quality 
named — means  the  power  of  self-control.  The 
Greeks  meant  this  when  they  made  the  first  rules 
of  conduct  "Know  thyself"  and  "Temperance  in  all 
things";  for  knowledge  of  self  is  the  first  step  in 
self-control,  just  as  temperance,  self-restraint,  is  its 
achievement.  Human  conduct  is  ordered  by  two 
great  forces,  our  instincts  and  our  virtues;  and  if 
you  will  reflect  upon  the  nature  of  the  virtues  (cour- 
age which  overcomes  fear,  temperance  which  con- 
quers appetite,  industry  which  outfaces  sloth)  you 
will  perceive,  I  am  sure,  that  the  virtues  are  in  the 
nature  of  curbs  and  reins  upon  the  instincts ;  the 
instincts  are  given  us  by  nature,  it  is  the  virtues 
that  can  be  trained.  Nor  is  self-control  less  essen- 
tiol  to  freedom  and  to  a  society  of  equals  than  is 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH      17 

love  of  truth;  for  it  is  the  practice  of  a  free  society 
to  be  able  to  give  as  well  as  to  take — to  abide  by 
the  rule  of  the  majority,  for  example,  and  take  one's 
turn  for  the  expression  of  opinion  or  the  execution 
of  a  policy  rather  than  to  rush  into  revolution  or 
tyranny.  The  third  factor  in  a  liberal  education 
is  love  of  beauty.  This  is  not  less  essential  to  an 
enduring  society  than  is  either  of  the  others;  for 
love  of  beauty  means  an  ability  to  idealize  and  to 
imagine  better  things,  and  hence  to  be  inventive  and 
creative,  and  therefore  interested  in  the  work  which 
men  find  to  do.  Without  this  idealizing  power  men 
sink  naturally  back  into  an  animal  indifference  to 
all  save  material  comforts ;  they  become  swinish,  and 
willing  to  fatten  at  any  trough ;  and  for  such  a  state 
of  mind  all  democracy  is  illusion.  Love  of  beauty 
is,  in  truth,  the  final  and  completed  salvation  of  the 
state. 

Now  there  is  one  characteristic  which  these  traits 
have  in  common,  and  it  is  the  one  characteristic 
which  makes  them  truly  liberal.  Love  of  truth  and 
love  of  virtue  and  love  of  beauty  are  all  unselfish 
and  impersonal.  Not  one  of  them  is  based  upon 
self-seeking  and  self-gratification  in  any  narrow 
mode.  Indeed,  they  move  in  quite  the  opposite 
direction.  Love  of  truth,  for  example,  is  closely 
allied  to  humility;  it  implies  a  willingness  to  be 
taught,  and  absence  of  that  conceit  which  is  the 
customary  mark  of  ignorance.  Love  of  virtue  comes 
only    from   a   self-understanding,    and   that   means 


18  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

from  a  full  appreciation  of  what  temptation  signifies 
in  human  life,  and  of  human  weaknesses,  and  es- 
pecially of  one's  own  weaknesses.  Love  of  beauty- 
is  most  of  all  a  native  generosity  of  soul,  implying 
sympathy  and  an  ability  to  enter  into  other  lives 
than  one's  own,  understandingly  and  without  envy. 
Thus  each  of  the  three  means  a  kind  of  liberation 
from  what  is  selfish  and  animal  in  one's  nature  and 
a  willingness  to  find  the  good  of  life  in  what  is  uni- 
versal and  humane.  It  is  in  such  liberations  that 
true  liberalism  is  to  be  found,  and  especially  the 
liberalism  that  makes  possible  democratic  states; 
for  it  is  in  democracies,  where  men  must  get  along 
together  by  mutual  agreement  and  free  self-surren- 
ders, that  willingness  to  learn  and  understanding  of 
men's  weaknesses  and  a  generous  sympathy  are 
most  indispensable. 

There  is  a  very  important  inference  to  be  drawn 
from  the  nature  of  liberal  education  so  defined — 
an  inference  thrice  important  in  our  own  day  when 
so  much  stress  is  laid  upon  what  is  called  vocational 
training  (and  really  is  technical  and  mechanical 
training).  For  clearly,  if  the  end  of  free  schools  is 
primarily  the  liberal  education  of  citizens  who  can, 
through  understanding  and  love  of  it,  preserve  the 
state,  it  cannot  be  the  first  purpose  of  these  schools 
to  give  the  scholar  training  in  particular  crafts  for 
the  sake  of  his  individual  career.  The  vocation  is 
something  that  pertains  to  the  private  rather  than 
the  public  life  of  the  man;  it  represents  what  he 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH      19 

does  for  himself  or  what  his  parents  or  family  do 
for  him  rather  than  what  the  state  should  be  called 
upon  to  do.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  good  coming  to 
the  state  from  the  fact  that  it  possesses  citizens 
highly  trained  in  special  crafts;  modern  society  is 
complex  and  cannot  continue  without  specialists  and 
technicians.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  a  com- 
munity composed  of  men  who  are  specialists  and 
technicians  without  first  being  liberally  trained  citi- 
zens cannot  continue  as  a  democracy;  inevitably  it 
will  develop  into  a  society  of  classes,  castes,  unions, 
federations,  mutually  hostile  and  exclusive.  Voca- 
tional education,  by  itself,  is  purely  aristocratic. 
The  first  duty  of  a  democracy  is  to  remain  a  democ- 
racy; and  the  only  schooling  it  can  tolerate,  there- 
fore, is  one  which  first  of  all  secures  to  all  its  citi- 
zens such  a  heart  and  constitution  of  liberalism  as 
shall  insure  the  maintenance  of  democratic  free- 
dom amid  all  the  complexities  of  technical  human 
pursuits.  This  is  a  matter  of  huge  importance, 
which  no  teacher  (even  of  the  most  special  subject) 
can  ever  afford  to  forget.  Undoubtedly  there  is 
room  in  our  schools  for  technical  and  vocational 
training;  but  it  is  equally  undoubted  that  no  true 
patriot  can  ever  allow  such  training  to  infringe  in 
the  slightest  upon  the  needs  of  a  broad  and  funda- 
mental liberalism. 

In  the  interests  of  that  liberalism  the  school-child, 
from  his  primary  years,  should  have  it  impressed 
upon  his  mind  that  his  public  schooling,  while  a 


20  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

free  gift  from  the  state,  is  not  given  without  expec- 
tation of  return.  He  should  have  it  impressed  upon 
his  mind  that  his  privileges  imply  responsibilties, 
and  that  the  first  and  last  of  his  duties  is  to  bring 
to  the  service  of  the  state  and  the  community  such 
an  understanding  of  human  life  as  only  an  imper- 
sonal outlook  can  give.  It  is  altogether  a  mistake 
to  permit  young  children  even  to  think  too  seriously 
of  their  own  careers  in  the  world.  They  should 
rather  be  concerned  with  mastering  its  history  and 
problems,  and  in  acquiring  such  an  understanding  of 
human  nature  as  shall  make  them  judges  of  the  gen- 
eral good.  Without  such  an  attitude  of  mind  the 
liberties  of  society  cannot  be  safeguarded,  while  it 
is  hardly  conceivable  that  all  the  time  and  effort 
devoted  to  its  cultivation  will  react  otherwise  upon 
our  technical  and  industrial  life  than  for  greater 
intelligence  of  direction  and  fruitfulness  of  achieve- 
ment. 

There  is,  of  course  (and  this  is  in  the  nature  of  a 
caution),  possible  misdirection  of  devotion  to  others. 
Youth  is  naturally  eager  and  generous  and  quick 
with  desire  to  serve.  "Social  service,"  indeed,  has 
become  a  perilous  term  nowadays,  our  danger  being 
that  we  shall  get  too  many  servants  and  too  little 
that  is  worthy  of  service.  It  is  essential,  therefore, 
that  the  lesson  of  modesty  be  learned  well,  and  this 
can  best  be  achieved  by  the  truest  liberalism.  Say 
to  the  young,  "If  you  would  best  serve  the  state  and 
best  serve  mankind,  this  will  be  most  fully  accom- 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH      21 

plished  and  to  the  height  of  your  abilities  by  a  culti- 
vated interest  in  the  best  and  solidest  in  human 
thought  and  the  noblest  in  human  nature;  such  an 
interest  you  can  obtain  by  study,  without  thought 
of  self,  which  in  making  you  an  intelligent  human 
being  will  thereby  make  of  you  a  true  guardian 
of  the  social  good."  Service  of  mankind  is,  after 
all,  not  best  realized  in  alms  to  individuals,  apart 
from  their  deserts,  but  in  devotion  to  the  best  that 
human  nature  is  capable  of;  and  this  can  be  known 
only  through  study  of  what  men  have  thought  and 
done. 

Liberal  education  is  not  a  cheap  thing,  either  for 
the  generation  which  gives  it  or  for  the  generation 
which  receives  it.  The  one  must  make  sacrifices 
of  material  comforts  for  the  sake  of  the  upbring- 
ing of  its  young;  and  it  should  endeavor,  for  the 
sake  of  that  progress,  which  means  social  health,  to 
pass  to  its  youth  something  more  in  the  way  of  op- 
portunity than  it  had  received  from  its  own  fathers. 
The  other  must  give  hard  and  unselfish  effort  to  the 
work  which  sound  schooling  always  implies;  for 
neither  understanding  of  truth  nor  of  virtue  nor  of 
beauty  comes  without  some  toil.  Fortunately,  deep 
in  human  nature  is  a  generous  devotion  of  parents 
to  the  good  of  their  children  and  a  generous  devo- 
tion of  youth  to  all  that  appeals  to  what  is  noblest  in 
man's  soul.  It  but  remains  for  the  teachers,  first, 
to  understand  the  spirit  of  liberalism,  and  second,  to 
be  able  so  to  make  its  needs  manifest,  to  parents  and 


22  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

children  alike,  that  through  understanding  they  will 
desire  it  and  will  devote  their  efforts  wholeheartedly 
to  its  attainment. 


LETTER  III 

THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMUNITY 

WHAT  I  said  in  my  last  letter  with  regard 
to  the  relation  of  the  schools  and  the  com- 
monwealth I  hold  to  be  the  first  principle  of  a  truly 
American  education.  From  the  primary  school  to 
the  university,  the  first  aim  of  the  public  schools 
should  be  the  inculcation  of  such  a  liberalism  of 
mind  as  shall  ensure  the  perpetuity  of  an  intelligent 
democracy.  Liberalism,  not  vocationalism,  must  be 
the  first  word  in  all  public  education;  it  is  for  this 
that  the  schools  are  created,  replacing  the  old  ap- 
prenticings  of  youth  (but  an  earlier  form  of  voca- 
tional training)  by  an  education  designed  not  only 
to  make  good  craftsmen,  but  wise  citizens.  This 
principle,  I  repeat,  must  never  be  forgotten  by 
teachers  or  school  officials  or  by  the  community,  and 
the  children  themselves  must  be  made  to  understand 
it  from  the  beginning.  Without  such  education 
democracy  rides  to  its  ruin. 

But  this  is  not  to  say  that  the  school  as  an  insti- 
tution need  rest  with  this  attainment,  or  that  the 
community,  having  provided  for  the  one  thing  indis- 
pensable, need  make  no  further  effort.  Fortunately, 
the  material  cost  of  liberalism  is  slight ;  it  is  not  only 

23 


24         .  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  most  important,  it  is  the  least  costly  element  in 
our  education.  A  teacher  with  the  gift  of  under- 
standing and  a  few  good  books  are  all  the  equip- 
ment that  is  necessary, — for  there  is  eternal  truth 
in  the  old  definition  of  a  college  :  a  log  with  a  student 
at  one  end  and  Mark  Hopkins  at  the  other.  No 
community  is  too  poor  to  afford  liberal  training; 
and  few  communities  there  are  that  cannot  afford 
much  in  addition.  Indeed,  a  community  which  is 
itself  liberally  trained  will  insist  upon  its  schools 
giving  much  in  addition. 

It  will  insist,  for  one  thing,  that  the  local  schools 
shall  be  representative  and  distinctive  of  the  local 
community.  In  its  broad  fundamentals,  state  edu- 
cation must  be  uniform  in  content;  but  certainly 
there  should  never  be  such  a  systematization  of  it, 
from  any  center,  as  should  preclude  each  community 
from  finding  the  highest  expression  of  its  own 
needs  and  genius  in  its  schools,  or  should  hamper 
a  teacher  in  developing  new  modes  of  securing  the 
essential  content.  Local  government  is  our  first 
training  for  state  government,  and  in  order  to  be 
sound  training  it  must  be  free.  Freedom  is  equally 
essential  in  the  local  schools;  they  should  never  re- 
fuse guidance  from  above,  but  they  should  be  slow 
indeed  to  permit  dictation.  Liberty  and  responsi- 
bility— these  are  only  secured  in  their  exercise. 

In  order  to  represent  a  community  a  school  must 
respond  to  the  community's  interests  and  guide  its 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMUNITY  25 

interests.      Both   of   these   are   important — the   re- 
sponse and  the  guidance. 

The  response,  of  course,  will  be  to  needs  felt  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  local  public.  Naturally — 
since  man's  life  is,  after  all,  primarily  still  that  of 
the  Adam  who  digged  and  delved, — the  material 
and  practical  needs  of  the  community  will  be  often- 
est  emphatic  in  the  minds  of  its  elders.  Parents 
will  perforce  be  thinking  of  the  careers  of  their 
children,  even  when  the  children  are  still  innocent 
of  ambition;  and  from  this  thought  will  come  a 
legitimate  concern  for  the  vocational  side  of  school- 
ing. Undoubtedly  it  should  receive  a  wise  response 
from  the  schools.  In  a  community  where  manu- 
facturing is  a  great  interest,  and  in  the  inevitable 
course  of  events  many  of  the  youth  are  bound  in 
time  to  replace  their  parents  in  the  parents'  occu- 
pations, it  is  reasonable  that  the  schools  should  give 
the  young  an  understanding  of  the  principles  and 
aims  of  craftsmanship  (which  ought  by  no  means 
to  imply  a  specific  apprenticeship  to  one  narrow 
trade — surely  beyond  the  rights  of  any  public 
school).  Similarly,  in  an  agricultural  community,  a 
knowledge  of  nature  and  the  love  of  it  would  be  the 
best  of  introductions  to  life  for  those  who  were  to 
become  nature's  especial  intimates.  There  is,  be- 
sides, in  every  community  a  scattering  of  boys  and 
girls  gifted  with  a  genius  unrelated  to  the  accident 
of  their  birthplace,  and  no  school  can  afford  to  be 
without  opportunities  for  the  child  who  brings  to 


26  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  world  an  aptitude  for  art  or  science  or  invention, 
or  for  the  one  who  is  born  with  that  zeal  for  man- 
kind whose  expression  is  the  lives  of  saints  and 
apostles.  The  local  school  should  have  for  a  prime 
object  its  own  power  of  adaptation  and  change,  not 
only  to  meet  possible  changes  in  the  local  industry 
(say,  from  cattle  to  corn,  or  agriculture  to  oil)  but 
even  more  to  suit  itself  to  the  genius  by  whose  birth 
the  community  might  be  blessed.  Schools  ought  not 
to  represent  systems  through  which  human  life  is 
forced  by  mechanical  pressure ;  they  should  rather 
be  gardens  in  which  the  natural  souls  of  men  are 
fosteringly  nurtured.  In  brief,  the  child,  not  the 
institution,  is  the  true  object  of  education. 

But  the  child  is  not  the  only  object  of  education, 
nor  is  the  school  capable  of  responding  merely  to  the 
industrial  needs  of  the  community.  Men's  educa- 
tion never  really  ceases  while  they  continue  to  live 
and  act ;  and  their  schooldays  ought  never  to  come 
to  an  end.  I  mean  this  quite  literally.  It  is  my  en- 
tire belief  that  the  school  of  the  future  will  stand 
not  merely  for  the  years  five  to  twenty,  but  one  to 
three  score  and  ten.  I  said  that  in  its  community 
the  school  should  not  merely  respond  to  local  inter- 
ests, it  should  also  guide  them;  it  should  discover 
for  them  and  aid  them  to  answer  what  they  so  often 
unconsciously  and  far  more  intensely  desire.  Here 
is  where  the  teacher  should  be  a  true  leader  of 
society,  a  psychologist  of  no  meager  gifts  and  a 
citizen  "primus  inter  pares." 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMUNITY  27 

The  Adam  who  digged  and  delved  is,  after  all, 
but  the  "first  Adam,"  suffering  the  penalty  of  his 
natural  weakness.  But  there  is,  in  us  all,  a  "last 
Adam,"  who,  as  St.  Paul  says,  is  "a  quickening 
spirit."  Not  always  is  the  last  Adam  a  conscious 
soul ;  often,  alas,  life  is  such  as  to  becloud  and  con- 
ceal his  faculties.  It  is  for  the  teachers — who  are 
spiritual  leaders  if  they  are  anything — to  awaken 
and  reveal  this  last  Adam,  and  find  for  him,  no 
matter  what  his  years  as  to  the  flesh,  in  the  schools, 
the  opportunity  of  understanding  and  expression. 
Men  and  women  and  little  children,  along  with 
schoolboys  and  schoolgirls,  all  should  look  to  the 
public  school  as  the  fostering  mother — alma  mater 
— of  their  fuller  life. 

The  thing  is  not  difficult  to  imagine,  and,  I  be- 
lieve, would  be  not  very  difficult  of  realization.  It 
could  begin  unpretentiously;  and  once  started — 
granted  understanding  leadership, — the  end  would 
be  achieved  almost  without  resistance.  Once  get 
firmly  centered  in  the  mind  of  the  community  that 
the  public  school  is  not  merely  the  temporary  war- 
den of  youth,  but  is  a  part  of  the  life  of  the  com- 
munity and  of  every  individual  in  the  commun- 
ity throughout  his  life,  and  the  schools  and  the 
teaching  profession  alike  will  be  transformed ;  while 
as  for  the  state,  it  will  be  more  firmly  founded  than 
ever  in  the  truest  of  democracies. 

Let  me  indicate  the  process  I  have  in  mind,  men- 
tioning first  of  all  those  needs  which  the  schools  can 


28  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

serve.  These  are  the  needs  of  those  very  faculties 
which  it  is  the  purpose  of  hberalism  to  cultivate; 
the  need  of  the  intellect,  which  is  instruction  in 
truth;  the  need  of  the  imagination,  which  is  images 
of  beauty;  the  need  of  the  moral  nature,  which  is 
social  understanding  and  sympathy,  and,  in  a  more 
intimate  form,  the  desire  for  participation  in  all 
that  is  good  and  noble,  for  which  the  school  should 
stand  along  with  the  church.  Such  are  the  needs  of 
the  "last  Adam"  when  at  length  he  makes  his  self- 
discovery, — needs  which  do  not  pertain  to  him  as  a 
private  body,  but  as  a  public  spirit  and  a  sharer  in 
humanity. 

Ministration  to  such  needs  ought  to  begin  with 
books,  which  are  the  records  and  perpetuators  of 
the  liberal  gains  of  the  human  spirit.  The  circula- 
tory system  is  not  more  essential  to  the  health  of 
-the  body,  pumping  red  blood  constantly  to  every 
wasting  organ,  than  is  the  library  to  liberal  culture. 
Every  school  should  not  only  have  a  library,  it 
should  be  a  library;  and  every  schoolmaster  should 
be  the  librarian  of  his  community,  guiding  the  selec- 
tion and  advising  in  the  use  of  books.  Children,  of 
course,  should  be  habituated  to  the  use  of  books 
from  their  first  reading  years,  and  they  should  have 
the  satisfaction  of  their  material  and  accessible 
presence.  But  the  community,  also,  should  look  to 
the  schoolhouse  as  the  center  of  its  reading  interest, 
— open  of  afternoons  and  evenings  to  all  comers,  to 
the  profit  of  all  and  the  pride  of  all.     Libraries  are 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMUNITY  29 

anchors  of  civilization  and  no  community  should 
be  satisfied  without  firm  anchorage. 

Again,  every  school  should  be  provided  with  an 
entertainment  hall — simple  in  form,  but  dignified 
and  beautiful,  as  simple  things  may  be, — and,  for 
outdoor  weather,  with  a  festal  greensward.     The 
love  of  beauty  is  native  to  all  men,  but  taste  needs 
cultivation,  and  cultivation  means,  most  of  all,  op- 
portunity to   see   the  beautiful.     Here   again,   the 
teacher  should  be  the  leader,  devising  constantly  new 
forms  of  entertainment — music  and  dancing,  exhi- 
bitions and  lectures,  pageantry  and  drama, — which 
the  community  should  not  only  be  offered  for  its 
appreciation,  but  in  which  it  could  find  opportunity 
of  expression  (the  straightest  path  to  appreciation). 
Why,   for  example,  should  not  every  schoolhouse. 
city  and  country,  be  the  possessor  of  its  own  cinema, 
giving  what  is  good  and  lasting  from  this  wonder- 
ful invention  and  thereby  eradicating  the  cheap  and 
sensational   and   often   damnable   "movie"?     Even 
more,  the  beauty  of  rhythmic  motion  and  dramatic 
imitation,  which  children  naturally  delight  to  give 
expression   to   and   elders   delight   to   contemplate, 
should  draw  youth  and  age  together  in  a  bond  of 
lasting   sympathy, — so  that   the  whole  community 
would  turn  to  the  school  as  surely  as  the  flower 
turns  to  sunlight  for  the  illumination  of  life.     Cer- 
tainly, were  I  the  maker  of  the  school  calendar,  it 
would  be  bright  with  red-letter  days. 

Finally  there  is  the  steadier  and  not  less  important 


30  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

response  which  the  school  could  give  to  the  social 
instincts  of  the  community.    Why  should  the  school- 
house  not  become  the  clubhouse  of  its  neighborhood? 
Young  folks  and  elders  alike  have  numberless  occa- 
sions for  meeting  in  social  groups,  formally  and  in- 
formally.   There  should  not  be  a  sharp  line  of  dis- 
tinction between  the  affairs  of  youth  and  those  of 
age;  at  least,  in  many  matters  the  interests  of  life 
should  be   without   this   division.      Further,   youth 
will  gain  in  maturity  and  judgment,  as  age  in  fresh- 
ness and  inspiration,  from  a  close  association,  es- 
pecially in  public  matters;  and  the  schoolhouse  is 
the  proper  place  for  bringing  about  this  union.    The 
old-time   lyceum  performed  such  a   function,   and 
performed  it  to  the  profit  of  a  good  Americanism. 
It  will  never  return  in  the  old  form,  but  it  may  well 
be  brought  back,  and  should  be  brought  back,  in  the 
newer   form  of   the  community   clubhouse,   which 
should  surely  be  the  schoolhouse.     In  it,  or  in  con- 
nection with  it,  should  be  provided  reading  rooms 
and    rest    rooms,    and    club   rooms,    and    debating 
rooms    (all   of   which   are    functions    that    can   be 
adapted  to  any  set  of  four  walls)  ;  and  there  should 
be  provided  also  outdoor  grounds  for  sports  and 
greens   for  picnics,   for  the  physical  school  should 
be  not  merely  bricks  and  glass,  but  park  and  garden 
as  well.     All  ages  and  sexes  and  conditions  of  life 
should  find  their  way  to  the  schoolyard,  not  once, 
but  many  times  a  year ;  and  so,  indeed,  they  would, 
once  the  idea  were  made  vivid  and  the  habit  started, 


THE  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COMMUNITY  31 

for  the  realization  of  all  this  is  only  a  matter  of  a 
leader  with  the  power  to  give  vivid  expression  to 
the  idea  and  the  skill  to  give  intelligent  direction  to 
the  forming  habit. 

Could  a  school  occupying  the  place  in  the  life  of 
the  community  which  I  have  suggested  be  anything 
less  than  a  fortress  of  democratic  libertv  and  true 
popular  sovereignty?  It  would  cultivate  intelligent 
thought  through  books  and  discourse;  it  would 
awaken  and  preserve  the  patriotism  of  its  own  com- 
munity's and  of  the  nation's  ideals  through  a  noble 
and  native  art ;  it  would  bring  men  and  women  and 
children  together  in  a  spirit  of  sympathy,  playful  or 
serious,  without  self-seeking,  without  private  ambi- 
tion. Finally,  the  institution  itself,  the  school  of  the 
community,  would  stand  physically  and  spiritually  as 
the  symbol  of  the  higher  life  and  nobler  ideals  of 
that  community.  Can  it  be  doubted  that  in  the  pres- 
ence of  such  a  symbol  the  citizens  would  more 
clearly  think  through  the  issues  of  human  life,  in- 
dividual and  public,  and  would  desire  more  ardently 
the  best  ?  And  so  I  would  say  to  my  fellow  teachers 
of  Nebraska :  Let  us  work  with  this  ideal  until 
Nebraska's  schools  shall  be  like  shining  standards, 
like  emblazoned  banners,  proclaiming  what  men  live 
and  labor  for  under  the  blue  Nebraska  skies ! 


LETTER  IV 

THE    SCHOOLYARD 

FOR  the  nonce  I  should  Hke  to  be  visionary  and 
indulge  an  Utopian  fancy — remembering  (as 
I  would  have  my  readers  remember)  that  all  the 
monuments  which  mankind  has  erected  were  once 
but  Utopian  visions,  and  that  it  is  out  of  such  vis- 
ions that  the  selective  years  make  their  choices  of 
the  ideals  which  men  deem  worth  working  for.  At 
least  one  fruit  of  the  cultivation  of  the  imagination 
is  to  give  men  those  images  of  ideal  things  from 
which  the  possible  are  chosen  and  the  actual  created. 
Ever  since,  as  a  boy,  I  went  to  school  at  the  old 
frame  house,  foursquare  with  the  four  winds,  and 
shivered  in  a  corner  far  from  the  stove,  I  have 
formed  and  reformed  my  speculative  vision  of  the 
ideal  school — which,  of  course,  has  grown  in 
form  and  finish  with  the  cumulative  terms.  In 
the  first  place,  I  would  have  the  school  buildings, 
if  not  monumental,  at  all  events  beautiful  in  form 
and  proportion  and  attractive  in  site;  for  I  am  a 
firm  believer  in  the  power  of  noble  architecture  to 
inspire  noble  thinking.  Architecture  is,  after  all, 
the  most  humane  of  all  arts;  for  it  is  concerned  not 
in  imitating  the  forms  of  nature,  but  in  satisfying 

33 


34  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

directly  human  needs,  and  of  all  the  works  of  man 
it  is  capable  of  giving  the  most  conscious  impres- 
sion of  the  strength  and  dignity  of  his  intelligence. 
Architectural  quality  should  be  a  prime  requisite  of 
every  public  building  and  most  of  all  of  educational 
buildings,  where  the  whole  spirit  of  the  state  is 
being  formed. 

But  architecture  must  be  appropriately  seated, 
and  my  second  demand  (not  less  imperative  than 
the  first)  is  that  every  school  yard  should  be  a  gar- 
den. I  do  not  mean  a  vegetable  garden  (though  in 
cities  space  for  even  that  is  worth  while),  but  I  do 
mean  a  garden  of  trees  and  shrubs  and  flowers, 
and  above  all  a  garden  for  the  bright  graces  of  child- 
hood and  youth — an  embowered  playground.  The 
seat  of  the  most  famous  of  all  universities,  the 
Academy  of  Plato,  was  a  grove ;  and  nowhere  should 
a  fane  of  education  be  erected  in  less  devoted  sur- 
roundings. Every  school  yard  should  be  famed  for 
its  elms  and  oaks,  its  lilacs  and  roses ;  for  the  beauty 
of  architecture  is  never  perfect  save  it  be  set  in  the 
friendly  context  of  the  beauty  of  nature — nor,  I 
think,  is  it  far-fetched  to  suppose  that  the  subtle 
lesson  of  the  interdependence  of  man  and  nature 
may  be  first  impressed  by  this  outward  symbol.  At 
any  rate,  beautiful  groves  have  always  seemed  to 
men  sacred. 

There  is,  in  cities,  another  reason  for  park-like 
school  yards.  The  streeets  of  modern  towns  are 
becoming  yearly  more  perilous,   while  the  houses 


THE  SCHOOLYARD  35 

themselves  are  more  and  more  packed  and  gregari- 
ous— the  lot  spaces  shrinking,  the  flat  and  apartment 
houses  increasing  in  number,  and  the  children  in 
consequence  being  crowded  more  and  more  to  the 
literal  walls.     It  seems  amazing  to  me,  in  view  of 
all  the  sentiment  we  have  for  golden  childhood  and 
in  view  of  the  undoubted  love  of  parents  for  their 
children,  that  such  meager  intelligence  is  used  in 
providing  space  for  the  life  of  childhood — space, 
space,  space!  with  sunlight  and  turf  and  room  for 
running.     Sooner  or  later   (and,  oh,  it  should  be 
sooner)    our  communities  will  awaken  to   a  con- 
sciousness of  their  own  blind  cruelty,  and  they  will 
restore  to   the  children  the   right  to  out-of-doors 
which   God   gave   them.     And    surely   the   school- 
masters and  school  directors  should  be  the  leaders  in 
such  a  movement.     For  which  reason,  I  think,  no 
city  or  village  school  should  be  set  in  a  space  of  less 
than   two   ordinary   town  blocks;   while   even   the 
country  school  can  afford  to  choose  a  fair  field  for 
its  site.     This  at  least,  out  of  my  Utopia,  I  shall 
prophesy — that   the    school   of   the    future   will   be 
seated  in  a  garden. 

But  let  us  enter  my  imaginary  school  garden — 

two  hundred  yards  long  by  a  hundred  wide,  or 
thereabouts,  with  the  buildings  forming  a  solid  H, 
following  the  lines  of  the  rectangle,  and  enclosing 
two  courts  for  sports  and  out-door  school  (for  I 
see  no  good  reason  why  in  fine  weather  school 
should  be  an  indoor  affair) .    A  low  wall,  with  vines 


36 


LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 




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THE  SCHOOLYARD  37 

running  over  it  and  flowers  and  shrubs  lining  it, 
surrounds  the  school  precincts,  while  at  each  corner 
of  the  grounds  there  are  clumps  of  trees,  with  play 
or  picnic  spaces  on  the  sward  beneath.  We  will  en- 
ter where  the  path  comes  in  beside  one  of  these 
clumps — say,  at  the  northwest,  for  normally  the 
axis  of  the  plan  should  be  north  and  south. 

As  we  turn  into  the  path,  we  perceive  to  our  left, 
at  the  north  center  of  the  grounds  and  a  bit  secluded 
by  greenery,  a  small  chapel  built  on  the  old  Byzan- 
tine plan  of  superposed  cross  and  circle.  We  may 
return  to  this  bye  and  bye;  for  the  present,  we  are 
drawn  in  the  opposite  direction.  There  we  see — 
dignified  with  those  columned  porticoes  which  in 
themselves  are  the  architectural  image  of  learning 
and  stateliness — the  facades  of  the  two  buildings 
which  form  the  extremities  of  the  upper  arms  of  our 
H.  That  which  we  are  passing,  to  the  right,  is  the 
museum  of  the  civic  and  school  district.  It  con- 
tains the  gifts  of  beautiful  and  curious  objects 
which  every  community  receives  when  it  provides  a 
place  for  them;  it  contains  natural  history  collec- 
tions; it  contains  exhibits  of  the  artistic  work  of 
the  school  children,  or  others;  and  it  is  of  course 
provided  with  spaces  for  special  exhibitions  of  in- 
terest to  the  community.  There  are  rest  rooms 
and  store  rooms  below  the  main  floor,  and  on  the 
floor  above  are  women's  rooms — small  committee 
or  conference  rooms  and  a  large  community  club 
room    for  women,   open  every  day.     The  branch 


38  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

of  the  H  leading  back  from  this  to  the  transverse 
central  building,  contains  on  the  first  floor  primary 
grade  rooms  (as  does  the  corresponding  branch 
across  the  court),  while  the  second  floor  is  devoted 
to  studios  and  rooms  for  girls'  instruction  in  things 
domestic  (let  us  not  call  it  by  the  terrifying  name 
of  "domestic  science!").  Naturally,  quarters  for 
cooking  and  dining  are  adjacent  to  this  section,  and 
they  are  to  be  found  in  the  western  end  of  the  cen- 
tral transverse. 

But  we  are  moving  too  rapidly  from  the  entrance. 
The  building  corresponding  to  the  museum,  at  the 
north  end  of  our  H,  is  the  community  library,  with 
men's  club  rooms  in  the  basement,  and  on  the  second 
floor  reading  and  study  rooms,  leading  directly  into 
the  grade  rooms  of  the'  adjacent  branch,  which 
should  have  free  access  to  the  use  of  books.  Be- 
yond, in  the  eastern  wing  of  the  central  building, 
are  locker  and  rest-rooms,  teachers'  quarters,  and, 
toward  the  street  (as  also  on  the  corresponding 
west  extremity  of  the  bar)  a  semi-circular  sun-room 
to  be  used  especially  for  little  folk  whose  health 
needs  double  care.  The  south  extensions  of  the 
arms  of  our  H,  beyond  the  transverse,  on  the  east 
are  devoted  to  school  rooms  for  the  grades,  and 
beyond,  widening  away  from  the  court  to  allow 
greater  space  for  sports,  to  a  gymnasium ;  while  on 
the  west,,  the  technical  and  scientific  laboratories 
lead  on  to  shops  for  wood  and  metal  working — 
which  ought  to  be  open  from  eight  o'clock  of  morn- 


THE  SCHOOLYARD  39 

ings  until  nine  at  night,  with  free  privilege  of  work 
to  all  school  boys.  Indeed,  the  whole  western  sec- 
tion of  the  school,  which  is  devoted  to  arts  and 
crafts,  should  keep  open  for  long  hours,  giving  the 
widest  opportunity  for  the  independently  ambitious 
maker  (and  all  youths  are  ambitious  makers)  to 
exercise  his  craftsman's  ingenuity. 

Between  the  shops  and  the  gymnasium  extends 
the  great  playground,  with  ball-court,  tennis,  and 
what  not,  for  the  older  children — the  youths.  And 
there  are  seats  for  spectators  against  the  south  wall 
— rather  for  the  elders  than  the  young;  for  youth 
should  play  and  age  applaud,  where  sports  are  the 
issue  (not  but  what  father  should  come  to  the  bat 
when  son  wants  a  little  quiet  game  at  the  old 
gentleman's  expense — or  there  might  be  quoits 
under  the  trees  for  the  fat  and  sedate). 

But  the  central  building  of  our  group  is  yet  to 
describe.  It  is  the  architectural  key  and  crown,  the 
two  courts  formed  by  the  branches  of  the  H  con- 
stituting its  approaches.  Loftier  than  the  adjacent 
wings,  or  any  other  unit  of  the  whole,  it  is  capped 
by  a  dome — in  my  school,  by  an  observatory  with 
telescope,  for  the  observation  of  the  stars  is  one  of 
the  most  fascinating  and  ennobling  of  studies,  the 
parent  of  science,  the  inspiration  of  philosophies,  the 
true  liberalizer  of  the  imagination.  Beneath  this 
dome  is  the  theatre,  for  school  assemblies,  for  pub- 
lic meetings,  for  civic  or  community  drama  and 
music.     Drama  is  and  should  be  the  natural  art  of 


40  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

democracies.  Further,  it  can  be  made  and  should 
be  made  an  important  and  continuous  feature  of 
public  instruction — continuous  from  school  days  on 
throughout  life's  course.  There  is  no  reason  why 
the  schools  of  a  community  should  not  furnish  dra- 
matic entertainments  of  many  kinds — plays,  operas, 
cinemas,  pageants,  vaudeville  (if  it  be  made  what  it 
can  be).  There  is  every  reason  why  the  schools 
should  furnish  such  entertainments — as  for  the  cul- 
tivation of  taste  and  morals,  for  the  advancement  of 
intelligent  citizenship  (for  so  many  reasons  that  I 
propose  to  write  a  letter  on  just  this  by  and  by) .  In 
my  ideal  school,  certainly,  this  theater  is  never  idle, 
but  for  school  children  and  citizens  alike  it  is  perpet- 
ually presenting  the  best  attainable,  and  perpetually 
bettering  the  attainable  in  creating  the  demand  for 
its  betterment. 

The  front  of  this  central  theater,  facing  the  north 
court,  is  in  the  form  of  an  outdoor  stage — for  in 
such  a  climate  as  Nebraska's  there  are  many,  many 
days  when  an  outdoor  performance  is  the  most 
charming  of  all.  This,  too,  for  music  (chorus, 
band,  or  orchestral)  is  the  ideal  place,  with  the  gar- 
dened court  before  it  for  spectators  and  listeners. 
You  will  remember  that  the  first  story  school-rooms 
opening  on  this  court  from  the  sides  are  for  the 
primary  grades;  and  these  rooms  open  out  in  wide 
sunny  arches,  forming  a  loggia  all  around  the  court, 
with  a  balcony  above  from  the  second-story  rooms 
— all  like  the  two  tiers  of  boxes  in  a  theater,  afford- 


THE  SCHOOLYARD  41 

ing  seating  for  the  spectacle  staged  out-of-doors. 
The  space  beneath  is  a  formal  garden,  with  a  large 
paved  circle  just  before  the  stage  (like  the  orchestra 
of  a  Greek  theater),  and  lesser  circles  or  hexa- 
gons, surrounded  by  seats,  interspersed  by  urn- 
borne  plants  and  flower  beds.  Here  the  smallest 
folk  have  their  play,  and  here,  on  sunny  days,  their 
teachers  bring  them  out  for  lessons  while  of  eve- 
nings the  whole  court  is  lighted  with  garden  lan- 
terns, and  the  grown-ups  listen  to  the  music,  or 
watch  the  pageant  on  the  stage  or  the  dancing  in 
the  paved  orchestra.  In  fact,  this  area  is  the  center 
of  community  recreation,  and  the  question  of  the 
day  always  is,  "What  is  going  on  at  the  school- 
theater  tonight?" 

We  have  now  completed  the  circuit  of  the  school- 
yard, and  are  returned  to  the  northern  entrance. 
There  before  us,  facing  the  court,  but  secluded  in 
its  setting  of  shrubs  is  the  little  Byzantine  chapel 
which  we  passed  when  entering.  We  will  suppose 
that  the  day  is  drawing  to  a  close,  and  the  hour  for 
vespers  is  come  (5  o'clock  of  winters,  7  o'clock  in 
the  summertime),  and  so  we  pass  in  at  the  open 
door  and  take  our  seats  quietly.  The  light  is  the 
light  of  sundown  toned  and  hued  by  the  stained- 
glass  windows — a  many-colored  dusk  at  once  soft- 
ening and  delicately  illuminating.  The  service  is 
in  the  same  quiet  spirit;  it  is  without  introduction, 
without  formality ;  there  is  an  organist  playing — one 
who  loves  and  understands  the  instrument;  that  is 


42  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

all.  Those  who  attend  may  be  a  score,  may  be  but 
two  or  three,  or  but  one.  It  makes  no  difference; 
the  organist  plays  the  noble  and  beautiful  music  of 
the  church,  and  the  hearers  enter  and  slip  away 
quietly.  Chapel  services  (never  compulsory)  are 
held  of  mornings;  the  vespers  are  daily,  too.  But 
all  day  long  the  doors  of  the  little  chapel  are  open; 
and  whoever  of  the  whole  community  there  may  be 
who  wishes  to  withdraw  from  the  world  for  a  still 
and  meditative  hour,  contemplating,  perhaps,  a  re- 
production of  one  of  the  world's  masterpieces  of 
religious  art  (nowadays  within  the  reach  of  all), 
finds  here,  in  the  cruciform  chapel,  the  privilege  of 
quiet  and  self-communion.  And  not  only  the  elders 
come,  but  often  the  youth.  For  youth  is  a  period 
when  many  solitary  battles  of  the  spirit  must  be 
fought  through;  when  friends  and  teachers  and 
parents  are  all  helpless,  and  the  boy  must  find  his 
courage,  the  girl  her  strength,  from  other  than 
human  aid. 

Perhaps  night  will  have  fallen  when  we  emerge 
from  the  grateful  quiet,  and  as  we  turn  away  we 
glance  once  more  at  the  buildings  we  have  explored. 
The  frosted  lamps  under  the  porticoes  that  lead 
into  the  library  and  museum  give  them  a  more  im- 
posing beauty;  while  lighted  windows  show  that 
both  buildings  are  in  full  use.  In  the  courtyard  pic- 
turesque garden  lanterns  give  a  romantic  charm,  and 
there  is  already  a  sound  of  evening  gaiety,  for  the 
folk  are  gathering.     We  look  up,  and  we  see  that 


THE  SCHOOLYARD  43 

the  stars  are  coming  out,  and  we  suspect  that  even 
now  there  is  some  eager  star-gazer  in  the  observa- 
tory, high  over  all.  For  all  of  us  are  star-gazers; 
and  always  there  are  Utopias ;  and  the  distance  from 
earth  to  heaven  is  measured  by  a  thought. 


LETTER  V 
THE  CURRICULUM 

U/^^URRICULUM"  is  a  word  I  detest.  It 
V,^_^  means  a  race-course  and  it  suggests  to  my 
mind  the  image  of  a  grand  free-for-all  in  which 
the  children — some  with  blinders  and  some  with  in- 
terference guards — are  the  entries;  the  teachers, 
with  snapping  whips  and  reins  taut,  are  the  jockeys ; 
the  parents  are  the  bettors  on  the  side-lines ;  and  the 
grades  are  the  marks  of  the  course,  leading  up  to 
the  finish,  where  the  youngsters  come  under  the 
line  nose  to  nose  at  commencement.  The  whole 
thing  is  full  of  dash  and  "pep" — and  empty  of 
meaning. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  subjects  studied  in 
the  schools  are  vain  or  that  the  methods  of  teaching 
are  inept;  that  could  be  but  the  judgment  of  igno- 
rance. But  I  do  say  that  my  own  most  vivid  im- 
pression of  our  "courses"  of  study,  in  grades  and 
university  alike,  is  of  organization  and  systematiza- 
tion  and  theorization  that  obscures  and  threatens  to 
destroy  the  true  meaning  and  value  of  public  edu- 
cation. The  machinery  of  instruction  has  become 
so  intricate  that  more  attention  is  drawn  to  its  opera- 
tion than  to  its  product.     This  is  wholly  damaging 

45 


46  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

to  the  intelligences  of  both  teacher  and  pupil.     In- 
deed, we  should  reconstruct  our  image  of  our  own 
task;  the  school  should  be  not  a  factory,  but  a  gar- 
den ;  the  teacher  not  a  machinist,  but  a  cultivator.    I 
am  no  farmer,  but  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  first  rule 
of  good  agriculture  is,  Keep  your  eye  on  the  crop. 
The  crop  which  the  public  schools  are  to  produce 
is  intelligent  citizenship,  and  the  seed  which  they 
must  sow  and  nurture  is  the  seed  of  liberal  learn- 
ing.   Everything  else,  therefore,  is  secondary  to  the 
old  trinity — reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic — which 
is  the  beginning  of  liberalism.     If  the  schools  but 
teach  these  three  they  have  given  keys  to  all  other 
knowledge.     Mankind  has  devised  two  great  modes 
of    communicating    ideas — language    and    number. 
Each  of  these  is  an  instrument  of  the  intelligence, 
nor  can  human  intelligence  move  freely  if  either  be 
undeveloped.     In  looking  to  the  end  of  education, 
therefore,  it  is  first  of  all  essential  to  provide  for  the 
mastery  of  these  first  gifts  of  civilization — which 
are  also  its  last  preservers. 

The  study  of  number  leads  to  various  attain- 
ments. I  suppose  its  most  obvious  end  is  the  prac- 
tical. It  is  not  merely  to  the  small  transactions  of 
daily  life  that  number  is  the  key — to  the  use  of 
clocks,  time-tables,  class  periods,  business  appoint- 
ments, meal  hours,  to  money,  transactions,  accounts 
^but,  in  a  broader  scope,  most  of  our  material  civ- 
ilization is  built  upon  mathematics;  mechanics, 
manufactures,  engineering,  building,  taxation,  com- 


THE  CURRICULUM  47 

merce,  and  again,  the  sciences,  physical  and  biologi- 
cal alike,  all  are  dominated  by  the  need  of  an  under- 
standing of  number.  There  is  a  kind  of  standard- 
ization of  civilization  which  is  represented  by  its 
mastery  of  mathematics,  and  is  only  in  part  sym- 
bolized by  such  universals  as  the  metric  system  or 
Greenwich  time,  measures,  respectively,  of  earth 
and  heaven.  The  study  of  number  leads  directly  to 
the  understanding  of  geography  and  astronomy, 
and  after  these  to  the  sciences,  applied  and  theoreti- 
cal, natural  and  social — and  it  is  this  fact,  even  more 
than  its  immediate  utilities,  that  makes  of  arithme- 
tic the  most  practical  of  studies. 

But  there  are  other  than  these  practical  conse- 
quences of  the  study  of  number.  First,  the  most 
direct  road  to  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong,  true 
and  false,  is  via  arithmetic.  In  other  fields  of 
knowledge  persuasion  is  needed  to  convince  of  the 
right  or  demonstrate  the  true.  In  mathematics  the 
process  of  demonstration  is  a  process  of  discovery, 
and  the  learner  finds  out  for  himself  that  the  line 
between  truth  and  error  is  hard  and  undeviating. 
This  is  a  moral  lesson — the  moral  lesson  that  is  the 
foundation  of  all  integrity  of  character.  Second, 
and  directly  related  to  the  preceding,  arithmetic  is 
the  road  to  the  discovery  of  our  common-sense. 
Number  is  the  most  universal  of  all  languages;  its 
truths  are  undeniably  clear  to  all  men.  Everywhere 
else  there  is  room  for  disagreement;  in  mathematics 
we   find   the   common   ground   of   men's   common 


48  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

thinking.  This  is  what  we  mean  by  common- 
sense  ;  and  it  is  a  thing  of  no  small  significance  that 
human  beings  may  be  brought  to  this  degree  of  mu- 
tual understanding  without  effort,  for  it  symbolizes 
the  possibility  of  a  final  understanding  in  all  our 
vital  human  affairs.  Even  before  the  great  war 
men  had  begun  to  dream  of  a  universal  science, 
shared  by  the  thinkers  of  all  nations  and  leading, 
through  scientific  congresses  and  world  confer- 
ences, to  an  eventual  political  understanding. 
The  thing  is  not  yet  impossible,  and  all  (in 
last  analysis)  just  because  there  is  no  disputing 
about  arithmetical  truths.  And  thirdly,  from  the 
study  of  number  comes  the  most  conscious  mental 
self-reliance.  Of  all  human  arts,  the  cultivation  of 
mathematics  is  least  dependent  upon  external  condi- 
tions— it  is  equally  possible  in  Greenland  or  the 
Congo;  it  is  an  affair  of  man's  intellectual  powers, 
and  its  consequences  and  constructions  are  so  in- 
finitely varied  that  we  speak,  and  speak  correctly, 
of  a  world  of  mathematics,  meaning  a  world  of  the 
mind's  own  self-reliant  discoveries.  Each  of  these 
three,  knowledge  of  truth  and  error,  participation 
in  humanity's  common-sense,  and  the  self-reliance 
of  the  intelligence,  is  a  quality  fundamental  in  the 
building  up  of  human  character.  Is  it  a  wonder, 
then,  that  Plato  set  over  the  portal  of  his  academy, 
"Let  none  ignorant  of  number  enter  here"? 

But  along  with  number  must  come  mastery  of 
that  other  great  means  of  human  communication, 


THE  CURRICULUM  49 

language.  Reading  is  the  key  to  the  discovery  of 
what  others  think ;  writing  is  the  instrument  for  the 
expression  of  one's  own  thoughts.  These  two  are 
the  give  and  take  of  discourse,  and  it  needs  no  ex- 
position to  show  that  they  are  the  first  needs  of  a 
democratic  state.  One  can  imagine  dumb  slaves  at 
labor  under  a  master  or  monks  living  in  their  soli- 
tary cells  under  a  vow  of  silence ;  but  in  a  free  polit- 
ical society  there  must  be  a  free  expression — debate, 
oratory,  the  press,  literature,  all  calling  for  a  skillful 
power  of  speech  and  a  willingness  to  hear  and  read. 
Besides  this  public  value,  there  is  all  that  a  knowl- 
edge of  books  can  mean  for  the  enriching  of  the  life 
of  the  individual  (as  a  giver  and  as  a  receiver). 
Indeed,  one  has  but  to  reflect  how  narrow  is  the  let- 
terless life,  how  defrauded  of  its  possibilities,  to  be 
doubly  convinced  that  a  love  of  reading  is  the  first 
gift  of  education. 

The  point  of  the  study  ought  to  be  a  love  of  read- 
ing and  the  cultivation  of  a  literate  taste,  rather  than 
a  stressing  of  forms  and  apparatus — whether  the 
language  be  native  or  foreign.  Language  exists 
primarily  for  use,  and  its  use  is  the  communication 
of  ideas.  I  never  could  see  much  reason  in  the  no- 
tion that  the  study  of  language  is  a  "discipline," 
the  good  of  which  is  to  be  derived  from  its  diffi- 
culty. Of  course  there  is  grammar  to  be  mastered 
and  vocabulary  to  be  memorized,  and  more  than  all, 
comprehension  to  be  given  of  the  fact  that  language 
is  capable  of  style  and  is  only  effective  when  the 


50  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

Style  is  appropriate — that  is,  that  there  are  differ- 
ent styles  for  different  occasions,  and  in  particular 
marked  differences  between  the  use  of  language  in 
oral  discourse  and  its  use  in  literary  forms.  But 
all  this  is  instrumental  to  the  great  end  of  learning 
to  read  and  to  love  reading.  For  it  is  not  only  from 
reading  that  we  get  our  fuller  appreciation  of  beau- 
tiful speech,  but  it  is  reading  which  opens  up  to  us 
the  vast  fields  of  history  and  philosophy  and  poetry, 
and  all  of  that  great  inheritance  of  the  thought  of 
great  minds  and  the  records  of  great  achievements 
which  give  civilization  its  meaning  and  national  tra- 
dition its  pride  and  spirit.  I  regard  my  own  uni- 
versity courses  primarily  as  introductions  to  certain 
fields  of  literature — groups  of  books;  and  my  pur- 
pose in  teaching  is  to  persuade  those  who  come  to 
me  to  read  further  in  these  books  than  any  limited 
course  of  study  can  provide  for.  This,  I  believe, 
should  be  the  impulse  of  all  study  of  languages 
(English  or  other) — to  cultivate  the  love  of  books. 
And  of  course,  books  should  be  provided;  a  school 
without  a  library  is  groping  in  the  night. 

Writing  is  the  complement  of  reading.  It  is  the 
art  of  the  expression  of  thought  (in  no  small  part, 
therefore,  the  art  of  thinking),  and  it  should  be 
taught  as  an  art.  Penmanship  and  spelling  are  to 
writing  what  grammar  and  vocabulary  are  to  read- 
ing— instrumental  and  preparatory.  The  real  pur- 
pose of  the  art  is  self-expression.  Think  for  a  mo- 
ment what  the  first-class  mail  of  the  United  States 


THE  CURRICULUM  51 

means  to  the  community,  not  merely  in  the  way  of 
economic  and  civic  solidarity,  but  in  the  far  more 
fundamental  task  of  keeping  alive  and  eager  those 
warm  instincts  of  human  kinship — family  and 
friendly  and  social — upon  which  our  mutual  sym- 
pathies rest;  is  it  not,  then,  certain  that  the  writer 
of  even  the  most  personal  letter  is  serving  the  state 
and  the  cause  of  mankind?  For  the  cultivation  of 
the  humane  in  human  nature  is  assuredly  the  great- 
est of  the  causes  to  which  human  effort  is  devoted. 

Doubtless  some  of  my  readers  are  wondering 
why  all  this  talk  about  the  obvious.  Of  course  the 
three  "r's"  are  taught,  and  will  continue  to  be 
taught.  But  are  they  always  taught  with  under- 
standing of  their  purposes? — an  understanding 
which  the  pupil  should  acquire  no  less  than  the 
teacher  have.  The  question  was  put  in  a  class  in 
educational  theory:  "Ought  a  prospective  farmer 
be  given  the  same  instruction  in  writing  as  a  pros- 
pective clerk?"  The  question  misses  the  whole 
point  of  the  art  of  writing  and  the  whole  meaning 
of  liberal  education.  When  teachers  of  teachers 
entertain  such  problems  as  real  it  is  surely  not  un- 
timely still  to  discuss  the  meaning  of  the  elements 
of  learning. 

Furthermore,  I  have  that  suspicion  of  the  curric- 
ulum which  I  mentioned  at  the  outset.  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  constant  peril  of  systematized  schools 
is  of  falling  into  the  notion  that  the  rote  and  rou- 
tine are  more  important  than  the  ends  of  study.     So 


52  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

many  periods  of  this  subject  or  that,  so  many  pages 
of  the  textbook,  so  many  required  topics  out  of 
the  way — all  this  gets  into  the  teacher's  mind  and 
contagiously  passes  to  the  pupil;  until  the  whole 
affair  of  schooling  becomes  a  game  (which  the 
skillful  student  delights  to  "beat"),  or  a  race  the 
object  of  which  is  to  cover  the  widest  range  of  ter- 
ritory in  the  fewest  possible  years — which  means 
seeing  school-life  and  all  life  quite  awry. 

Rather  (if  we  are  to  stand  for  liberalism)  we 
should  be  looking  always  to  the  ends.  Teacher  and 
pupil  alike  should  become  aware  that  arithmetic  and 
the  other  branches  of  mathematics  are  a  magic  key 
to  the  unlocking  of  nature's  secrets — that  the  whole 
day  lit  world  is  full  of  numbers,  and  that  the  more 
one  knows  of  numbers  the  better  will  be  one's  un- 
derstanding of  the  world.  They  should  perceive, 
too,  that  honesty  and  rectitude  and  integrity  of  mind 
are  related  to  number,  and  that  arithmetic  is  good 
common  sense.  The  pupil  should  be  introduced  as 
soon  as  possible  to  the  world  of  thought  and  imagi- 
nation which  reading  opens — history,  literature, 
speculation;  and  the  love  of  these  things  should  be 
the  constant  end  of  tuition.  And  through  reading 
and  writing  alike  the  youngster  should  be  brought 
to  understand  that  language — even  one's  mother 
tongue — is  an  art  of  thinking  and  expression,  and 
is  therefore  a  possession  well  worth  pains  and  striv- 
ing. The  art  of  teaching  is  surely  an  art  of  show- 
ing ends  worth  working  for.     The  teacher  cannot 


THE  CURRICULUM  S3 

give  the  benefits  of  study;  he  can  only  point  them 
out,  and  by  example  and  enthusiasm  for  the  best  in- 
spire in  the  student  that  willingness  to  work,  with- 
out which  there  can  be  no  education.  It  must  be 
generous  work,  too,  if  liberal  culture  is  to  be  at- 
tained— given  for  love  of  the  things  sought,  for 
knowledge  of  truth  and  perception  of  beauty  and 
strengthening  of  character;  and  it  ought  not  to  seem 
to  any  child  or  youth  merely  a  race  for  so  many 
buttons  or  credits  or  for  nosing  out  at  the  finish. 


LETTER  VI. 

THE  HUMANITIES 

SUBJECTS  studied  in  school,  broadly  divided, 
fall  into  four  classes.  There  are,  first,  the  in- 
struments of  learning,  languages  and  mathematics, 
without  which  advance  in  any  line  is  impossible. 
Second,  there  are  the  practical  studies,  leading  to 
craftsmanship  and  vocation.  Third,  there  are  the 
natural  sciences;  and  fourth,  the  humanities.  Of 
these  four  groups,  the  first  two  are  instrumental  in 
character;  they  have  to  do  either  with  the  mastery 
of  the  keys  to  study  or  with  the  attainment  of  pro- 
ficiency in  some  special  art  that  ministers  to  one's 
bread  and  butter  activities.  The  second  two,  the 
sciences  and  the  humanities,  are  in  the  nature  of 
ends,  rather  than  means,  so  far  as  the  life  of  the 
individual  is  concerned;  and  it  is  their  office  to 
broaden  and  clarify  his  impersonal  understanding 
of  life, — his  political  judgment,  taken  in  the  widest 
and  truest  sense.  In  my  last  letter  I  talked  about 
the  general  bearings  of  study  of  language  and  num- 
ber ;  in  future  letters  I  propose  to  discuss  vocational 
and  scientific  studies.  Here,  and  in  letters  imme- 
diately following,  I  wish  to  dwell  upon  the  signifi- 
cance in  education  of  the  study  of  literature,  history, 
philosophy, — the  litterae  humaniores. 

55 


56  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

Literature  as  it  should  be  defined  in  the  concep- 
tion of  teachers  is  indeed  as  broad  as  the  humani- 
ties :  it  includes  not  only  the  imaginative  expression 
of  great  minds,  in  poetry  and  fiction,  but  also  the 
intellectual  expression  which  molds  the  destinies  of 
races  and  nations  and  the  reflection  of  thinkers  upon 
both  the  world  of  men's  affairs  and  the  world  of 
nature.  Among  the  classics  of  English  literature 
are  not  only  Shakespeare's  plays  and  Thackeray's 
novels,  but  Milton's  Areopagitica,  Darwin's  Origin 
of  Species,  the  Federalist  Papers,  the  Gettysburg 
speech.  The  length  and  breadth  and  height  and 
depth  of  human  thought  about  human  things  is 
comprised  within  the  radius  of  the  humanities. 

Literature  in  this  broad  and  true  sense  is  not  lim- 
ited by  national  or  linguistic  boundaries ;  it  is  as  ex- 
tensive as  is  the  world  of  books.  This  means  that 
its  whole  range  should,  in  a  sense,  be  comprised  in 
its  beginnings ;  and  that  the  teacher  who  undertakes 
to  guide  the  first  interest  of  children  in  English  lit- 
erature should  already  be  thinking  in  the  terms  of 
that  general  European  literature,  of  which  English 
is  only  a  special  department.  English  literature,  to 
be  sure,  forms  our  natural  introduction  to  this  more 
general  field ;  and  we  of  the  English  speech  are  for- 
tunate, indeed,  in  possessing  natively  so  noble  a  con- 
tribution to  serve  as  our  introduction  to  the  whole. 
But  we  should  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the 
completer  our  acquaintanceship  with  the  whole  the 
truer  will  be,  not  only  our  understanding  of  the 


THE  HUMANITIES  57 

meaning  of  letters,  but  also  our  understanding  of 
our  own  literature.  European  literature,  from  classi- 
cal times  onward,  forms  a  single  and  consecutive 
story,  reflecting  the  achievements  of  that  European 
civilization  and  ideal  of  life  which  is  ours  by  right 
of  inheritance  and  development. 

All  this  may  be  made  to  begin  to  appear  in  the 
very   earliest    stages   of    schooling.     I    do   not,    of 
course,  mean  that  young  children  should  have  their 
attention  directed  to  facts  about  literary  relation- 
ships; that  would  be  absurd.     But  I  do  mean  that 
in  the  selection  of,  say,  fairy  and  other  forms  of 
folk  tales,  of  simple  ballads,  and  the  like,  we  are  al- 
ready laying  the  foundations  for  an  eventual  appre- 
ciation of   European   literature   as   a   whole.     For 
both  in  form  and  content  these  tales  and  ballads  are 
universal,  passing  from  language  to  language  and 
from  century  to  century  with  little  aheration.    They 
are  probably  the  most  ancient  and  are  certainly  the 
most  widespread  of  literary  forms.     In  the  course 
of  time  a  body  of  classics  has  been  established  in 
this  field  no  less  than  in  the  more  mature  ranges  of 
literary  expression ;  and  it  should  be  a  part  of  every 
child's  education  to  know  these  classics.     For  my 
part,   I  think  it  far  more  important  that  my  boy 
should  know  his  Aesop  and  Grimm  and   Mother 
Goose  than  that  he  should  be  indulged  in  the  can- 
died tidbits  that  fill  some  of  our  "modern"  school 
readers. 

The  principle  which  I  am  indicating  should  be 


58  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

extended  from  the  first  reading  years  to  the  end  of 
Hfe — the  principle  of  progressive  acquaintanceship 
with  the  best.  The  world's  body  of  classics  is  not 
so  vast  but  that  the  greater  part  of  it  may  become 
the  possession  of  almost  anyone  who  early  develops 
a  taste  for  it.  If  teachers,  therefore,  by  taking 
thought,  see  to  it  that  in  each  grade  of  advancement 
the  boy  or  girl  be  shown  only  the  best  and  be  asked 
to  give  effort  to  this  alone,  it  can  hardly  be  but  that 
in  time  the  student's  own  selective  judgment  will 
carry  him  forward.  My  own  notion  is  that  there 
are  three  capital  rules  which  should  govern  school 
reading.  They  are :  ( 1 )  All  formally  assigned 
readings  and  memorizings  should  be  of  acknowl- 
edged classics.  (2)  Assigned  readings  should  al- 
ways be  effort-exacting;  the  reader  must  be  taught 
to  think  as  he  reads.  (3)  Reading  should  be  free 
and  extensive;  there  should  be  for  each  reader  an 
unexhausted  supply  of  the  best  books  suitable  to  his 
years. 

The  first  of  these  points  hardly  needs  discussion. 
The  word  "classic,"  to  be  sure,  sticks  in  the  gorge 
of  some;  but  the  thing  itself  is  not  terrible  if  we 
but  recollect  that  it  is  used  only  as  meaning  what  has 
been  tried  out  and  found  by  long  usage  to  be  the 
best.  Most  of  the  works  which  we  call  classics — 
at  any  rate  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  fields — have  been 
school  books  for  centuries;  and  they  have  been 
chosen  and  used  as  school  books  primarily  because 
they  are  simple  and  clear.     It  is  these  qualities  of 


THE  HUMANITIES  59 

simplicity  and  clearness,  coupled  with  beauty,  no- 
bility and  truth  of  thought,  that  make  classics  in  all 
languages;  classic  literature  is  therefore  in  the  best 
sense  the  most  accessible  of  all  literature.  There 
are,  of  course,  classics  for  all  years;  children's, 
youth's,  and  maturity's.  It  is  the  mark  of  them 
that  through  all  years  they  never  cease  to  be  classics ; 
so  that  age  still  enjoys  Aesop  and  Alice-in- Wonder- 
land possibly  more  keenly  even  than  does  childhood. 
In  regard  to  my  second  rule  I  feel  that  more 
ought  to  be  said.  Lowell  advised  Howells,  when 
the  latter  was  a  young  author:  "Read  what  will 
make  you  think;  not  what  will  make  you  dream." 
This  is  the  essence  of  reader's  wisdom.  There 
must  always  be  some  effort  in  attaining  new  ideas  if 
they  are  really  to  become  incorporated  in  the  body 
of  the  reader's  thought.  The  very  idea  of  books 
is  to  give  a  kind  of  short-cut  experience  of  those 
parts  of  the  world  which  are  too  remote  in  time  or 
space  or  in  the  dimensions  of  thought  to  be  lived 
through  by  everyone.  In  the  world  of  books  we 
are  led  through  innumerable  worlds  which  could 
never  otherwise  be  ours.  If  we  would  have  the  full 
benefit  of  the  adventure  it  must  be  a  bit  strenuous 
— like  all  real  living.  All  of  which  means  that  the 
reader  ought  not  perpetually  to  be  renewing  his  ac- 
quaintance with  the  familiar ;  but  that  he  should  al- 
ways be  adventuring  into  the  unknown  in  the  realm 
of  ideas.  Reading  ought  surely  to  be  pleasant,  but 
it  ought  quite  as  surely  to  call  for  stout  effort  and 


60  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

Stiff  thinking;  it  should  never  (in  school)  be  mere 
pastime.  I  say  this  rather  from  a  university  than 
a  grade-school  standpoint ;  for  many  a  time  students 
have  complained  to  me  of  the  difficulty  of  reading 
assignments  (unfamiliar  words,  elusive  concep- 
tions), as  if  it  were  the  business  of  books  merely 
to  remind  them  of  what  they  already  know  and  in 
words  with  which  they  are  familiar.  But  surely 
no  student  ought  to  come  to  the  university  with  any 
such  preconception;  the  grade  schools  should  see 
to  that. 

My  third  rule — that  reading  should  be  free  and 
extensive — is  the  most  important  of  all.  From  the 
sixth  grade  upwards,  as  I  guess,  there  is  little  need 
for  formal  and  detailed  study  of  texts  in  one's  own 
language,  while  there  is  every  need  for  the  encour- 
agement of  free  reading.  This  means  a  library  and 
the  time  to  use  it.  Fortunately,  no  school  need  be 
without  a  library  sufficient  to  any  good  school's 
needs.  Books  were  never  cheaper  than  they  are  to- 
day, and  the  best  books  are  the  cheapest.  I  am 
thinking  of  such  collections  of  the  world's  best 
books  as  Everyman's  Library,  as  the  Oxford  clas- 
sics, or  as  ex-President  Elliot's  five  feet  of  Harvard 
classics — all  readable  and  handy,  all  easily  obtainable 
and  at  small  expense,  and  all  of  them  books  worth 
the  reading.  Give  the  school  boy  the  run  of  them, 
and  the  growth  of  his  taste  need  occasion  the 
teacher  no  worry. 

But,  you  will  be  asking,  is  there  not  to  be  detailed 


THE  HUMANITIES  ,  61 

class  analysis  of  the  great  monuments  of  our  litera- 
ture, especially  in  the  upper  grades?  Shakespeare, 
for  example.  Now  it  goes  without  saying  that 
Shakespeare  should  be  a  part  of  the  acquisition  of 
every  English-speaking  school  child.  But  for  my 
part,  I  can  see  no  good  reason  for  devoting  school 
room  time  to  poring  over  his  texts — a  play  to  the 
term.  It  is  far  better  that  the  student  should  read 
all  of  Shakespeare  even  with  little  understanding 
than  that  he  should  know  two  or  three  plays,  as, 
alas !  sometimes  proves,  ad  nauseam.  It  is  not  par- 
ticularly important  if  he  make  mistakes  of  interpre- 
tation or  miss  half  the  points;  for  Shakespeare  hap- 
pens to  be  the  sort  of  a  writer  whose  books  last, 
whose  meaning  inevitably  grows  with  the  re-read- 
ing. Indeed,  it  is  a  poor  book  that  is  exhausted  in 
a  single  reading,  or  that  is  completely  understood 
in  any  one  period  of  life.  A  book  ought  not  to  be 
comprehended  at  the  outset ;  it  is  enough  if  it  arouse 
the  kind  of  interest  which  will  bring  the  reader  back 
to  it  again  and  again  as  life  passes  Courses  in  lit- 
erature, in  history,  in  philosophy,  all  should  encour- 
age wide  reading,  which  in  the  long  run  is  the  only 
source  for  true  comprehension  and  the  only  founda- 
tion for  a  sure  taste. 

In  all  this  I  have  been  speaking  apart  from  the 
question  of  the  study  of  foreign  tongues.  But  this 
has  been  in  order  that  I  might  first  of  all  make  the 
meaning  and  end  of  such  study  clear.  For  from 
the  point  of  view  of  liberal  education  we  study  for- 


62  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

eign  languages  in  order  that  we  may  make  the  ac- 
quaintance of  their  Hteratures.  As  I  have  said,  the 
study  of  Hterature  is  the  study  of  European  Htera- 
ture  of  which  English  is  only  a  fragment.  Not  all 
European  languages  that  have  literatures  can  be 
taught  in  the  schools ;  but  not  all  are  equally  import- 
ant, and  the  most  important  can  and  should  be 
taught.  English  is  first,  grammar  and  syntax  along 
with  literature;  but  English  should  be  able  to  take 
care  of  itself,  almost  subconsciously,  after  the  first 
good  start.  When,  therefore,  the  schoolboy  has 
reached  the  place  where  he  will  read  for  himself  in 
his  mother-tongue,  it  is  time  that  he  begin  the  study 
of  one  of  the  other  languages  which  are  the  instru- 
ments of  our  civilization  and  the  keys  to  the  mean- 
ing of  history — a  stage  which  I  should  suppose 
would  be  reached  in  the  seventh  or  eighth  grade, 
and  certainly  ought  not  be  later  than  the  ninth. 

And  what  should  be  the  first  language  studied? 
Well,  I  am  enough  of  a  fogy  to  say  unhesitatingly 
that  it  should  be  Latin.  There  are  a  number  of  rea- 
sons for  this  choice.  First,  Latin  is  the  key  to  more 
centuries  of  the  world's  history,  and,  on  the  whole, 
to  a  greater  range  of  literature  (historical  and  polit- 
ical as  well  as  imaginative)  than  is  any  other  lan- 
guage. Second,  Latin  is  a  key  to  the  understanding 
of  fundamental  English,  for  the  majority  of  our 
words  and  forms  of  expression  are  directly  or  in- 
directly of  Latin  origin.  Third — and  by  no  means 
least — Latin  is  the  best  taught  of  languages,  a  sin- 


THE  HUMANITIES  63 

gle  year  of  it  giving  far  more  in  the  way  of  returns 
than  is  to  be  obtained  from  the  study  of  any  other 
foreign  tongue.  Of  modern  languages  I  regard 
French  in  form  and  habit,  as  nearer  to  EngHsh  than 
is  any  other  language,  while  French  literature  is  far 
the  most  important  modern  literature  other  than 
our  own.  Further,  it  is  so  intimately  connected 
with  the  English  that  the  two  may  almost  to  be  said 
to  form  one  great  literature.  Greek  among  ancient 
and  German  among  modern  languages  are  second 
in  importance  to  Latin  and  French,  and  should 
surely  be  made  accessible  in  high  school  for  all  stu- 
dents having  linguistic  gifts  or  literary  enthusiasms. 
But  whatever  the  language  studied,  it  should  never 
be  forgotten  that,  if  it  be  in  the  interests  of  liberal 
education,  the  study  is  pursued  for  the  sake  of  liter- 
ature, of  the  litterae  humaniores.  If  we  study 
Latin  or  Greek  it  is  for  reading  the  very  words  of 
the  great  classical  authors;  if  we  study  French  or 
German  or  English  itself  (and  English  demands 
hard  study  for  its  real  mastery),  it  is  in  order  that 
we  may  read  French  and  German  and  English  lit- 
erature. We  should  not  teach  language  for  the 
sake  of  "discipline,"  far  less  for  the  sake  of  philol- 
ogy, but  only  for  the  sake  of  making  readers.  But 
we  should  remember  that  in  making  readers  we  are 
giving  the  best  gift  that  education  can  give,  and 
performing  its  highest  service  to  the  state ;  for  it  is 
books  that  transmit  civilization  and  it  is  the  freedom 
of  printed  speech  that  preserves  the  state. 


LETTER  VII. 
HISTORY 

IF  letters  and  numbers  are  the  tools  of  a  liberal 
education,  the  structure  of  the  edifice  is  surely 
history.  Human  civilization  is  not  a  thing  that  is 
created  anew  in  each  generation;  it  is  a  bequest,  a 
heritage,  handed  on  from  the  generations  of  the 
past,  and  accumulating  with  generations.  Further, 
it  is  by  no  means  transmitted  automatically  nor 
without  loss;  rather,  its  continuance  depends  upon 
conscious  effort,  the  effort  of  teachers,  and  upon 
wise  selection  of  what  shall  be  taught.  Each  suc- 
ceeding generation  of  men — if  they  are  to  continue 
the  work  of  civilization — must  have  been  initiated, 
as  it  were,  into  its  mysteries  by  the  men  of  the  pre- 
ceding generation,  and  the  initiating  officers  are  the 
teachers.  Not  all  the  experience  of  any  single  gen- 
eration can  be  handed  on  to  its  successors,  but  only 
the  most  valuable  and  significant  of  its  experiences, 
selected  out  from  the  whole.  It  is  such  selected  ex- 
periences, accumulating  with  the  years,  that  consti- 
tute history,  and  it  is  these  which  make  possible  the 
culture  that  separates  the  civilized  man  from  the  un- 
taught savage. 

Knowledge  of  history  is  the  preserver  of  civiliza- 

65 


66  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

tion.  This  being  true  it  is  obviously  of  the  first  im- 
portance that  history  be  thoroughly  and  wisely 
taught  in  the  public  schools.  It  should  be  clear  that 
history,  in  the  scope  in  which  I  am  conceiving  it,  is 
not  the  record  of  any  one  particular  form  of  human 
activity.  It  is  not  (as  many  of  us  might  think  first 
off)  merely  the  records  of  the  political  activities  of 
men — of  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations  and  states,  with 
the  recounting  of  their  battles  and  the  roll  of  their 
passing  monarchs.  Neither  is  it  merely  this  with 
the  addition  of  the  social  and  economic  changes 
which  influence  the  destinies  of  peoples.  It  includes 
all  these  as  necessary  parts,  and  in  particular  na- 
tional and  dynastic  records  form  the  frame  or  guide 
with  reference  to  which  other  facts  are  given  orient- 
ation in  time.  But  history  in  its  full  and  signifi- 
cant sense  comprises  the  total  record  of  human 
achievements  in  all  the  great  fields.  It  comprises 
along  with  the  story  of  political  changes  and  the 
record  of  the  spread  of  the  races  of  mankind  over 
the  globe,  the  history  of  the  growth  of  ideas  in  reli- 
gion and  philosophy  and  literature,  the  history  of 
discovery  in  science,  the  history  of  invention  in  art 
and  industry.  Religion,  letters,  art,  science,  indus- 
try,— all  these  represent  the  superstructure  of  civil- 
ization, the  development  of  which  is  made  possible 
(in  the  higher  forms)  by  political  and  economic  or- 
ganization. It  is  mainly  these  activities  which  give 
the  value  of  Hfe.  They  are,  therefore,  justly  re- 
garded as  the  measures  of  civilization;  and  it  is  ob- 


HISTORY  67 

vious  that  if  the  aim  of  the  schools  be  the  preserva- 
tion and  enlargement  of  the  gifts  of  civihzation,  no 
teaching  can  be  more  important  than  is  that  which 
strives  to  make  of  our  citizens  quahfied  judges  of 
these  higher  forms  of  human  activity.  Knowledge 
of  the  history  of  culture — that  is,  of  the  develop- 
ment of  ideal  interests  as  well  as  of  the  course  of 
human  events — is  thus  the  completed  end  of  liberal 
education. 

Necessarily,  there  must  be  a  starting-point  in  the 
inculcation  of  such  a  vast  body  of  knowledge;  and 
this,  without  doubt,  should  be  the  history  of  the 
races  and  nations  of  mankind.  There  must  be,  first 
of  all,  a  conception  of  the  beginnings  of  things  hu- 
man and  of  the  importance  of  "before  and  after"  in 
the  arrangement  of  events.  Personally.  I  am  an  ar- 
rant rebel  against  the  so-called  recapitulation  the- 
ory as  applied  to  pedagogy, — that  is,  the  notion  that 
every  child,  in  the  course  of  his  education,  must  run 
the  gamut  of  experiences  marking  the  progress  of 
the  race  upward  from  savagery.  But  I  think  we 
may  take  this  one  lesson  from  the  untutored  child 
of  nature, — namely,  that  a  myth  of  the  beginnings 
of  things  is  the  natural  introduction  to  a  conception 
of  history.  For  it  is  true  that  savage  peoples  have 
such  myths  long  before  they  dream  of  counting 
their  genealogies  or  telling  over  the  count  of  their 
tribal  chieftains.  Luckily,  there  are  many  excellent 
school  readers  which  tell  the  story  of  ancient  man, 
as  he  was  in  the  dawn  of  history;  and  I  suppose 


68  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

that  the  great  body  of  folklore  tales  of  giants  and 
heroes  and  princesses  and  the  like,  who  lived  "once 
upon  a  time"  or  "long,  long  ago,"  give  as  good  an 
introduction  as  one  need  ask  for  to  the  conception 
of  changing  times  and  passing  events.  Certainly  no 
child  should  be  deprived  of  them. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  this  introduction,  as  belong- 
ing to  the  primary  grade.  The  next  step — and  it 
can  hardly  be  emphasized  too  clearly — is  to  impart 
the  chronological  form  of  history,  the  "time-form," 
by  means  of  which  the  "before  and  after"  of  events 
is  shown  in  detail.  I  think  I  can  best  illustrate 
what  I  mean  by  reference  to  a  well-known  psycho- 
logical phenomenon.  A  considerable  per  cent  of 
those  who  learn  numbers  acquire,  with  their  first 
knowledge  of  the  notation,  what  is  called  a  "num- 
ber-form." The  number-form  is  an  imaginary 
spatial  arrangement,  a  picture  or  mental  diagram,  of 
the  integers  in  their  natural  successions.  Often 
such  number-forms  begin  with  a  circle,  the  numbers 
1  to  10  running  about  it  clockwise  (showing  the  in- 
fluence of  the  dial  of  the  clock,  but  modified  by  the 
power  of  the  decimal  idea),  while  the  higher  num- 
bers, first  in  tens,  and  then  in  hundreds,  run  off  into 
space  at  all  sorts  of  tangents  and  angles.  A  person 
who  acquires  such  a  number- form  (quite  uncon- 
sciously) in  childhood  is  virtually  certain  to  carry 
it  through  life.  Now  a  chronological  time-form  is 
very  similar.  It  also  is  organized  according  to  the 
decimal  system,  into  decades  and  centuries  and  mil- 


HISTORY 


69 


TIME=FOJ?N  OF  EUffOPE/ifl    HISTORY 


East 


West 


PCRIOD 


PflLETOLITniC,  Of?    OloStONC    I\gE   ((iMYMlLLZniR) 


■n 


E  HISTORIC 


Meolithic,  or   Netw  SroNcVleE:  f  10,000  -zqooo  yctrsJ 


4000 


,3000 


2000 


1000 


/\tinu5 


Thf 


1000 


;?ooo 


ftuwfiAL    Civilizations 
in    THC     M/lC    /mo  Henia 

EuPH>r/tTCS        VflLLCYS 

>340  0    J>ir><flSTic  Egypt 


TrE'B> 


T7i?sT  tinmrinc    Civ/l- 


/Inc/cmt   Empires 
0)  BnarLoninn 
U)    EorPTtnn 


F(f?5TOtrMP(ftD77^5 
G/P>l£co'Pr(?ji/iK  Wflffs 

Cmpikc  or  /iitxflnocR 
330=325 


400+      \ 
ThC   G?£«nori\ 


DeATM  Of  /iwin 
30  74 


The  Dcluse 


TxODuS 
1491 

KirtSOorv 
I  Of  5 


BflaYLONIflM 

C/?PTiy;TY 


Meolithic 
Aqe 


Age    or 
Bromzc 


TfNOO  = 

TuROPEfln 

TjCPANSIOrt 


753 

/^ueusrus  DiPEROR 
27 


The:  RonAw  Empirc 


FnLi.s-47fc 


Brz/wTinc    EnpiHE 

??I3E    OF  THE     5«RflCi:r«S 


The    OtTonflM   FnPiRt: 
Tne    Russian  CfipiiE 


GERMRmc      Ttlv(\3lOH5 

Ci/JRi-cnnGME-  Ti^PtROR 
yoo 


nroirvflu     CnnRCh 
Hooc-RK     SrflrES   ToRi-iiws 
TSf     T?EFO«>m-rior) 
Colonial      EriPiRCS 

MODERM       5ci£NCe 

Dew  ocft  fl  CY 


FfeoTOHISTORIC 


s  o 


(y)  r 

"1   J 

5      o 


70  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

lenia,  and  it  has  a  middle  position,  or  era,  with  re- 
spect to  which  all  the  balance  is  organized.     It  is 
simple,  to  be  sure,  in  its  structure;  but  it  is  not  so 
simple  that  it  need  not  be  taught,  for  (I  speak  from 
experience)  it  is  altogether  easy  to  find  in  a  group 
of  university  students  not  a  few  who  are  unable 
to  define  "the  Christian  Era"  with  any  accuracy, 
who  have  only  hazy  understandings  of  "B.  C."  and 
"A.  D."  or  who  fail  wholly  in  attempts  to  charac- 
terize even  the  greater  periods  of  history,  in  their 
time  perspective.     We  are  all  familiar  with  the  mis- 
chief wrought  to  a  child's  geographical  understand- 
ing by  the  distortions  of  map  projections;  only  a 
globe  can  set  him  at  rights.     The  same  thing  is  true 
with   respect   to  the   time   perspective :    its   general 
form,  with  the  Christian  Era  forming  a  kind  of  his- 
torian's equator,  must  be  in  his  mind  in  order  that 
the  student  shall  correctly  place  the  items  of  his 
growing  historical  knowledge.     The  whole  signifi- 
cance of  history  is,  indeed,  dependent  upon  the  order 
of  events  in  time ;  and  the  student  who  cannot  tell 
what  is  first  and  what  is  second,  what  is  before  and 
what    after,    misses    the    conception    of    historical 
growth  and  casuality.     In  short,  what  the  multipli- 
cation  tables  are   to   arithmetic  or  the  axioms  to 
geometry,  the  time-form  is  to  the  study  of  history. 
Of  course  a  chronology-form  is  not  a  thing  to  be 
memorized  direct  in  all  its  elaborations, — which  are 
indeed  com.plex  when  taken  in  connection  with  the 
history  of  mankind  over  all  the  globe.     Rather  it 


HISTORY  71 

must  be  built  up,  in  connection  with  definite  con- 
tents, like  an  arithmetical  number-form.  Probably, 
the  best  method  is  to  approach  it  from  both  ends — 
the  modern  history  of  one's  own  country  and  an- 
cient history — at  the  same  time.  The  history  of 
one's  own  land  can  be  made  elementary  because  of 
its  familiar  nearness ;  ancient  history  is  easy  because 
of  its  relative  simplicity  (partly  due  to  our  meager 
knowledge,  partly  to  its  restricted  character),  and 
because  of  its  association  with  the  Bible,  which  is 
the  key  to  our  chronological  system.  Ancient  his- 
tory, moreover,  is  better  capable  of  being  shown  as 
a  history  of  culture  in  all  its  variety,  than  is  mod- 
ern,— I  mean  for  elementary  courses.  It  is  not  the 
politics  of  Egypt  or  of  Greece  that  appeals  to  the 
imagination  so  much  as  the  art  and  the  modes  of 
life;  and  all  these  are  simpler  in  form  and  more 
obvious  in  gradation  than  in  later  centuries.  One 
might  almost  take  ancient  architecture  as  the  index 
of  the  quality  of  the  whole;  it  is  readily  intelligible 
because  of  the  simplicity  and  symmetry  of  its  mem- 
bers, and  it  serves  as  a  kind  of  progressive  symbol- 
ization  of  progress, — from  the  childish,  even  if 
huge,  pyramids  and  enclosed  tem.ples  of  Egypt  to 
the  open  colonades  of  the  Greek  and  the  arches  of 
the  Roman  civic  edifices,  as  it  were  framed  to  ad- 
mit the  spirit  of  freedom  and  democracy  along  with 
the  light  of  day  into  the  abodes  of  men. 

At  the  other  extreme,  American  history  is  begun 
naturally  and  vividly  with  the  tales  and  incidents 


n  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

that  stir  patriotic  idealism  and  explain  the  great  na- 
tional festivals.  But  its  study  leads  inevitably  and 
early  beyond  the  boundaries  of  America,  back  to  the 
Old  World,  whence  our  fathers  came;  and  from 
Britain  on  to  the  Continent,  and  from  our  own 
country  back  through  the  centuries  of  the  history  of 
western  Europe.  There  is  probably  in  all  human 
history  no  great  episode  so  broadly  unified  as  is  the 
development  of  Catholic  Christendom  out  of  the 
ruins  of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  is  from  this  devel- 
opment, either  directly  or  through  the  reaction  of 
the  Reformation,  that  all  modern  western  nations 
take  their  rise  and  get  their  color  and  temper;  and 
it  ought  to  be  the  easiest  of  tasks  to  impress  upon 
the  mind  of  a  child  who  has  already  grasped  the 
great  central  fact  of  the  Christian  Era  the  general 
form  of  the  development,  which  through  mediaeval 
Christendom,  leads  from  Imperial  Rome  on  into 
democratical  America.  Having  grasped  this  fact, 
he  will — I  venture  to  say — have  acquired  the  funda- 
mental key  to  the  understanding  of  our  civilization 
and  of  our  ideals,  political,  social,  and  religious. 

For  it  must  be  remembered  that  American  history 
and  American  institutions  (like  all  other  objects  of 
knowledge)  can  never  be  understood  in  isolation. 
We  can  only  understand  what  we  are  in  seeing 
clearly  what  we  are  not ;  and  in  particular  in  seeing 
what  we  have  grown  out  of  being.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  American  history  should  lead  inevitably 
into  English  history,  and  English  into  west  Euro- 
pean,  and  west  European   into  Roman  history, — 


HISTORY  73 

where  the  connection  is  naturally  made  with  the  an- 
cient Mediterranean  history,  of  Egypt,  Judea, 
Greece,  in  which  our  civilization  has  its  remote 
roots.  So  much  of  history, — at  least  so  much, — 
should  be  mastered  in  its  broad  outlines  by  every 
youth  who  leaves  the  high  school  (and  I  am  tempted 
to  say,  by  every  youngster  through  with  the 
grades)  ;  for  it  is  fully  as  important  that  he  have 
this  general  background  into  which  to  fit  the  facts 
which  his  later  knowledge  will  bring,  as  it  is  that  he 
should  have  a  clear  conception  of  the  globe  and  its 
continents  as  a  foundation  for  fuller  geographical 
and  physiographical  knowledge.  Time-form  and 
space-form  are  alike  fundamental,  if  the  world  is  to 
be  understood,  or  the  affairs  of  life  wisely  judged. 
But  I  must  repeat  what  I  said  in  the  beginning. 
History  is  not  merely  political  history — nor  merely 
economic,  for  nowadays  there  is  an  unfortunate  and 
.untrue  stress  laid  upon  what  is  called  "the  economic 
interpretation  of  history."  History  is  rather  a 
complex  of  the  development  of  all  human  interests. 
All  the  great  interests — industry,  art,  science,  let- 
ters, philosophy,  religion, — are  not  only  manifesta- 
tions of  human  progress,  they  are  also  causes  of 
human  progress.  My  own  special  field  of  study  is 
the  history  of  philosophy,  that  is  the  history  of 
men's  abstract  thinking  about  the  meaning  of  human 
life;  and  for  the  later  history  of  mankind,  from  the 
Greeks  onward,  I  am  certain  that  a  very  clear  case 
might  be  made  for  the  domination  of  ideas,  as 
causes  of  progress  and  as  the  true  interpreters  of 


74  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

history.  It  was  ideas,  for  example,  that  led  to  the 
Crusades,  that  led  to  the  discovery  of  America,  and 
in  large  part  to  its  settling;  it  was  ideas,  again, — 
the  great  ideas  expressed  in  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence— that  brought  about  our  Revolution  and 
the  establishment  of  the  United  States  as  a  free  na- 
tion; and  it  is  ideas  and  an  ideal  of  justice  and  hu- 
manity that  have  plunged  us  whole-heartedly  into 
the  great  European  struggle — now,  indeed,  a  world 
struggle.  Ideas  and  ideals,  in  art,  science,  religion, 
letters,  are  of  tremendous  importance  in  human  af- 
fairs. Comprehension  of  them  is  the  beginning  of 
all  political  wisdom.  Comprehension  of  them  is 
also  the  surest  safeguard  of  democratical  rights,  and 
the  true  seed  of  patriotism.  It  is  certain  as  day, 
therefore,  that  a  schooling  which  fails  in  giving  to 
the  growing  generation  the  fullest  knowledge  of 
history,  in  all  its  bearings,  which  it  is  capable  of 
giving  is  traitorous  to  its  duties.  Men  must  be  able 
intelligently  to  survey  the  past  of  mankind,  in  order 
to  comprehend  the  present,  in  order  to  look  forward 
to  a  wisely  prepared  future.  Hence  it  is  that  after 
the  tools  of  learning  are  mastered,  the  study  of  his- 
tory should  be  made  the  core  of  the  curriculum,  to 
be  pursued  without  interruption  from  the  child's 
first  tales  of  Washington  and  Lincoln  to  the  college 
senior's  study  of  the  history  of  philosophy.  Even 
then  the  subject  will  but  have  received  an  introduc- 
tion, so  vast  is  its  scope.  Fortunately,  history  is  the 
easiest  of  all  subjects  to  carry  forward  when  school- 
days are  past — the  easiest  and  the  most  important. 


LETTER  VIII. 

THE  BIBLE  IN  THE  SCHOOLS 

IN  my  last  letters  I  discussed  the  place  of  the  hu- 
manities and  of  history  in  the  public  school  cur- 
riculum. In  the  letter  which  I  now  write  I  propose 
to  discuss  a  topic  immediately  related  to  these,  and 
that  is  the  place  of  the  study  of  the  Bible  in  the  pub- 
lic schools. 

This  matter  is  immediately  related  to  the  study 
of  the  humanities  and  of  history,  first  of  all,  because 
it  is  a  part  of  such  study.  The  Old  Testament  is 
the  literature — historical,  poetical,  and  philosoph- 
ical— of  an  ancient  nation  having  in  antiquity  more 
than  a  thousand  years  of  recorded  history,  and  a  na- 
tion which  has  been  second  to  none  in  its  influence 
upon  the  subsequent  history  of  the  western  world. 
That  its  influence,  like  that  of  the  Greeks,  has  been 
exclusively  in  the  domain  of  ideas  and  ideal  influ- 
ences but  renders  the  more  patent  the  necessity, 
which  every  person  who  can  pretend  to  historical 
learning  must  recognize,  of  an  intimate  acquaintance 
with  its  literature.  The  two  great  sources  of  ideas 
at  the  foundation  of  European  civilization  are  the 
Greek  and  the  Hebrew ;  the  thought  and  experience 
of  both  of  these  ancient  peoples  is  still  living  and 

75 


76  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

vital  in  our  society,  in  the  one  case  in  art,  philos- 
ophy, and  science,  in  the  other  in  religion  and  in  the 
interpretation  of  history.  Obviously,  he  who  would 
understand  the  modern  world  must  be  familiar  with 
its  great  beginnings  in  the  literatures  and  records 
of  these  ancient  peoples. 

Of  course  the  Old  Testament  cannot  be  separated 
from  the  New,  in  this  consideration.  Nor  is  there 
any  reason  why  it  should  be  so;  for  every  reason 
which  can  be  urged  for  an  acquaintance  with  the 
Old  Testament  applies  equally  to  the  New;  from 
any  point  of  view  it  is  a  book  of  profound  signifi- 
cance in  the  development  of  the  thought  of  the 
western  world.  The  very  fact  that  we  mark  our 
era  and  tell  our  time  with  reference  to  events  nar- 
rated in  the  New  Testament  indicates  the  tremend- 
ous significance  which  these  events  have  for  our 
imaginations  and  for  our  interpretations  of  human 
life.  Indeed,  as  I  indicated  in  my  last  letter,  the 
first  lesson  which  a  child  must  learn,  who  would  be 
at  all  instructed  in  history,  is  the  meaning  of  the 
Christian  Era ;  and  again  as  I  indicated,  the  readiest 
and  best  approach  to  a  comprehension  of  history  is 
through  the  chronological  arrangement  of  Biblical 
events  as  formulated  in  theological  tradition — such 
an  arrangement  as  is  given  by  Archbishop  Ussher, 
and  was  indicated  in  the  "time-form  of  European 
history"  which  accompanied  my  last  letter.  This, 
I  say,  is  easy  to  impress  upon  a  child's  mind,  both 
because  of  its  simplicity  of  form  and  because  of  its 


THE  BIBLE  IN  THE  SCHOOLS  11 

dramatic  appeal;  for  we  should  not  overlook  the 
fact  that  the  Bible,  in  spite  of  its  being  a  collection 
of  books  composed  through  a  series  of  centuries,  has 
none  the  less  in  its  organization  and  scope  the  form 
of  a  great  drama  of  history  and  of  the  world,  and 
is  in  this  sense  alone  the  most  stupendous  co-ordina- 
tion of  ideas  yet  achieved  by  mankind.  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Regained — surely  the 
noblest  poems  in  the  English  language — are  an  in- 
terpretation of  this  Biblical  drama  of  the  world, 
which  in  the  course  of  centuries  has  become  so  deep- 
seated  in  the  European  mind  that  it  colors  all  forms 
of  speculation:  politics,  history,  geology,  astron- 
omy, to  say  nothing  of  art  and  literature,  have  been 
and  are  influenced  beyond  count  by  Biblical  ideas. 
It  goes  without  saying,  therefore,  that  knowledge  of 
these  ideas  is  a  pre-requisite  to  an  understanding 
of  ourselves. 

But  it  is  not  merely  for  its  historical  significance, 
fundamental  as  this  is,  that  the  study  of  the  Bible 
is  important  from  a  public  school  point  of  view.  It 
must  also  be  regarded  as  a  great  and  moving  record 
of  human  experience,  and  of  experiences  which 
time  has  shown  to  possess  the  most  profound  power 
to  mould  the  sentiments  of  mankind.  In  this  sense 
the  Bible  is  not  only  to  be  reckoned  among  the  hu- 
manities, but  it  is  by  all  odds  the  foremost  of  the 
humanities.  No  one  can  for  a  moment  question  it's 
pre-eminence  among  the  ideal  forces  which  have 
gone  to  the  making  of  the  mental  attitudes  of  men 


78  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

of  the  present  day.  Here  again  we  come  to  the 
final  issue  of  education;  namely,  the  comprehension 
of  human  nature  in  its  subtlest  and  most  enduring 
interests,  to  the  end  that  we  may  be  able  to  live  the 
lives  of  self-comprehending  men,  and  therefore  of 
self-responsible  citizens.  Such  comprehension  de- 
mands perspective,  and  in  particular  it  demands  the 
power  to  enter  imaginatively  into  the  great  move- 
ments of  the  past,  which  have  been  profound  de- 
terminants of  later  conduct.  If  the  Bible  contained 
no  more  than  the  Gospels,  Acts,  and  Epistles  of  the 
New  Testament,  it  would  still  be  incomparably  the 
most  significant  of  our  records  out  of  the  past;  for 
in  these  tracts  (which  is  what  first  they  were),  we 
have  the  picture  of  the  greatest  ideal  movement 
which  has  ever  influenced  mankind — a  movement 
which  made  its  century  the  first  of  our  era,  and 
without  rival  the  most  striking  century  in  the  whole 
story  of  human  progress.  This  judgment  I  believe 
must  be  confirmed  by  every  student  of  human  his- 
tory, no  matter  what  his  views  as  to  the  final  inter- 
pretation of  the  Scriptures. 

Reasons  such  as  I  have  given  make  it  certain  that 
the  Bible  is  a  proper  subject  for  school  instruction. 
It  is  of  first  order  in  intrinsic  significance,  and  other 
subjects,  both  scientific  and  historical,  cannot  be 
fully  understood  apart  from  Biblical  knowledge. 
But  there  are  yet  other  considerations  which  em- 
phasize this  importance  of  the  book.     I  refer  to  its 


THE  BIBLE  IN  THE  SCHOOLS  79 

contemporary  meaning  in  intellectual  and  religious 
experience. 

The  first  of  these,  the  intellectual,  apart  from 
the  historical  and  humanitarian  values  which  I  have 
already  discussed,  is  a  literary  value.     As  literature 
the  Bible  is  a  very  extraordinary  book,  most  extra- 
ordinary, I  think,  from  the  fact  that  in  the  long  run 
it  has  been  more  influential  in  translations  than  in 
the  original  texts.     In  English,  for  example,  there 
is  no  book  by  a  native  author,  not  even  Shakespeare 
which  has  had  so  profound  an  influence,  not  only 
upon  the  thought  of  English-speaking  peoples  but 
upon  the  style  and  quality  of  the  language  itself, 
as  has  the  King  James  version  of  the  Bible.     The 
imagery  and  diction  of  this  version  are  so  charac- 
teristic that  we  regard  its  style  as  the  finest  model 
we  possess  for  simple  and  forceful  as  well  as  for 
noble  discourse.     Moreover,  many  books  and  pas- 
sages of  the  Bible  are  themselves  examples  of  sub- 
limity not  only  in  matters  of  style,  but  in  that  union 
of  exalted  style  with  exalted  thought  which  Lon- 
ginus  regards  as  the  supreme  achievement  of  litera- 
ture;  nor  is  it  without  thought  that  Longinus — 
though   a   pagan   himself — cites   the   beginning   of 
Genesis  as  a  high  example  of  sublimity.     Similarly, 
Watts-Dunton,  the  British  poet  and  critic,  speaks 
of  the  Biblical  psalm  as  constituting  a  special  form 
of  the  lyric  poem,  which  he  terms  "the  Great  Lyric" 
and  which  he  places  alongside  of  the  tragic  drama 


80  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

and  epic  poem  as  supreme  among  the  forms  of  hu- 
man literary  expression. 

The  Bible  is,  of  course,  the  most  read  book  in  the 
world.  It  is  also  the  most  edited  and  translated. 
In  the  English-speaking  world  familiarity  with  the 
authorized  version  is  all  that  is  strictly  to  be  de- 
manded of  a  man  of  culture  and  all  that  the  schools 
need  take  greatly  into  account.  Nevertheless,  there 
is  another  version  of  the  Bible  which  ought  to  some 
extent  be  known,  especially  by  persons  who  make 
literature  an  important  part  of  their  study.  This 
is  the  Latin  Vulgate,  the  style  of  which  not  only 
served  as  the  model  for  the  English  of  the  author- 
ized version,  but  has  in  innumerable  ways  affected 
the  development  of  literary  expression.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  whole  field  of  profoundly  moving  Latin 
literature,  the  Latin  literature  of  the  church  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  to  which  the  Vulgate  is  the  natural  in- 
troduction; and  it  is  my  own  opinion  that,  in  the 
university  at  least,  this  field  and  type  of  Latin  (for 
the  style  is  as  distinctive  as  is  Biblical  English) 
ought  to  be  given  a  position  little  short  of  that  ac- 
corded to  classical  Latin.  Certainly,  here  is  an- 
other reason  for  the  stressing  of  the  study  of  the 
classical  languages ;  for  Latin  is  the  tongue  of  one 
of  the  greatest  fields  of  European  literature,  the 
Christian  literature  of  the  church,  while  Greek  is,  of 
course,  the  original  language  of  the  New  Testament 
and  of  the  Septuagint  version  of  the  Old.  It  has 
been  the  habit  of  educators  to  regard  knowledge  of 


THE  BIBLE  IN  THE  SCHOOLS  81 

these  as  necessary  only  in  the  case  of  clergymen  and 
theologians,  but  this  is  certainly  an  erroneous  view 
so  far,  at  least,  as  the  Vulgate  Bible  is  concerned; 
its  phrases  re-echo  throughout  the  whole  range  of 
the  European  literature  of  our  era. 

But  what  of  the  Bible  as  a  religious  book?  Dare 
the  schools  tamper  with  the  great  source  of  religious 
instruction  more  or  less  jealously  interpreted  by  the 
many  groups  of  Christian  sectaries?  The  question 
is  certainly  a  delicate  one;  it  has  been  and  is  the 
cause  of  the  gingerly  fashion  in  which  the  public 
schools  approach  instruction  in  Biblical  learning. 
Nevertheless,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  by  no  means 
an  insoluble  problem.  Knowledge  of  the  Bible  is 
a  vastly  important  factor  in  a  sound  liberal  educa- 
tion; this  is  undeniable,  and  it  is  this  fact  which 
makes  the  duty  of  the  schools  to  offer  instruction 
in  this  as  in  other  liberal  branches  obvious.  Granted 
the  duty,  the  tactful  means  should  be  discoverable. 
It  is  surely  an  anomaly  that  we  have  numbers  of  pri- 
vate schools  supported  along  with  our  public  schools 
to  give  this  form  of  instruction,  which  the  parents 
of  the  children  who  attend  these  private  schools 
rightfully  regard  as  important. 

Possibly  if  we  call  to  mind  the  circumstances 
which  have  induced  the  present  attitude  of  the  pub- 
lic schools  with  respect  to  this  subject,  we  may  be 
in  a  better  position  to  pass  judgment  upon  sound 
policy.  These  circumstances  go  far  back  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  education,  finding  their  roots  in  the  two 


82  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

great  cultural  movements  which  introduced  what 
we  call  the  modern  period  of  western  history.     I 
refer  to  the  Renaissance  and  the  Reformation.     On 
the    side    of    book-learning,    the    Renaissance   was 
marked  first  and  essentially  by  its  tremendous  in- 
terest in  the  pagan  classics  of  Greece  and  Rome. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  the  universities  had  given  no 
instruction  in  the  pagan  humanities,  and  had,  in- 
deed, in  particular  frowned  upon  a  too  close  ac- 
quaitance  with   the   writings   of   the   pagan   poets. 
Theology,  philosophy,  and  poetry  all  had  their  ec- 
clesiastical forms  distinct  in  spirit  and  form  from 
the  classics.     But  the  Renaissance  humanists  were 
immensely  taken  with  the  rediscovered  monuments 
of  pagan  literature;  they  developed,  indeed,  a  verit- 
able cult  of  these  "humanities"    (as  distinguished 
from  theological  studies),  and  out  of  this  enthu- 
siasm grew  the  modern  academic  "classical"  educa- 
tion,  stressing  pagan  and  avoiding  Christian  cul- 
ture.    To  a  not  inconsiderable  degree  the  Renais- 
sance reaction  against  the  mediaeval  schools  is  the 
source  of  our  modern  liberal  arts  college ;  and  since 
the  liberalism  of  the  college  is  reflected  in  the  sec- 
ondary schools,  the  whole  tendency  of  the  Renais- 
sance spirit  has  been  to  secularize  educational  ideals 
— leaving,  of  course,  the  matter  of  religious  (and 
Biblical)   instruction  in  the  hands  of  the  churches. 
The  Reformation  raised  still  another  issue.     The 
mediaeval  church  had  been  eminently  political  and 
in   general   international.     With   the   Reformation 


THE  BIBLE  IN  THE  SCHOOLS  83 

came  the  rupture  of  Protestant  and  Catholic  and  at 
the  same  time  the  establishment  of  national 
churches.  The  conflict  of  church  and  state  which 
grew  out  of  these  movements  has  had  various 
forms :  the  form  of  the  antagonism  of  Protestant 
nations,  with  their  own  national  churches  against 
Catholic  internationalism ;  the  conflict  of  Protestant 
sects,  not  officially  recognized  with  the  established 
churches,  and  finally  the  conflict  of  the  political  pub- 
lics of  various  nations  (including  our  own  at  its 
foundation)  with  the  whole  idea  of  politically  rec- 
ognized religious  bodies.  These  varied  conflicts, 
which  in  some  countries  are  still  undetermined,  have 
given  rise  to  a  general  modern  sentiment,  especially 
in  the  democratic  nations,  that  the  political  society 
should  be  tolerant  of  all  denominations  and  should 
favor  none;  and  hence  to  a  general  conviction  that 
public  school  instruction  should  be,  as  it  were,  neu- 
tral in  all  matters  touching  religion.  It  is  this  feel- 
ing, indeed,  which  has  had  most  to  do  with  the  dis- 
couraging of  Bible  study  in  the  public  schools  of 
the  United  States. 

But  it  is  obvious  that  these  influences,  both  of 
the  Renaissance  and  of  the  Reformation,  are  not 
vital  in  our  country  and  time;  they  belong  to  the 
Old  World  and  to  former  centuries.  The  United 
States  has  nothing  to  fear  politically  from  eccle- 
siasticism  within  its  borders,  while  the  academic 
tradition  with  respect  to  the  classics  Is  already  tre- 
mendously weakened  by  the  broadening  of  modern 


84  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

curricula.  Indeed,  teachers  of  the  classics  should 
gladly  welcome  such  an  added  incentive  to  their  cul- 
tivation as  is  afforded  by  interest  in  the  Christian 
Latin  literature.  When  such  supreme  poets  as  the 
Catholic  Dante  and  the  Protestant  Milton  can  be 
comprehended  only  by  a  combined  knowledge  of  the 
Bible  and  the  pagan  classics  it  is  clear  that  the  hu- 
manist cannot  dispense  with  either  source. 

The  final  matter  is  purely  one  of  method.  How 
should  Bible  study  be  handled  in  the  public  schools  ? 
The  answer  can  only  come  in  full  from  trial,  but  1 
think  I  can  point  to  at  least  two  lines  of  approach 
at  once  important,  easy  and  beyond  criticism.  The 
first  of  these  is  the  historical,  which  I  have  already 
mentioned.  Biblical  history  should  be  taught  as  a 
part  of  ancient  history  and  as  a  clue  to  the  under- 
standing of  all  history.  This  is  in  part  done  al- 
ready in  school  text-books  in  ancient  history,  but 
these  text-books  are  rarely  brought  into  connection 
with  the  Biblical  narratives,  a  task  which  every 
teacher  of  school  history  should  see  through,  if  for 
no  other  reason  than  to  keep  the  mind  of  the  young 
from  an  utter  confusion,  and  from  what  sometimes 
happens,  a  contempt  for  the  historical  value  of  the 
Bible  itself.  If  the  book  were  used  for  what  it  cer- 
tainly is,  one  of  the  most  important  of  all  our 
sources  of  knowledge  of  ancient  history,  it  could 
hardly  fail  to  command  an  attention  and  respect 
which  too  many  of  us  can  testify  is  now  wanting. 

My  second  suggestion  has  to  do  with  the  use  of 


THE  BIBLE  IN  THE  SCHOOLS  85 

the  Biblical  text  itself.  The  telling  of  Bible  stories 
to  the  young  in  other  than  the  language  of  the  Bible 
seems  to  me  a  waste  and  a  wrong.  It  is  a  waste 
because  the  text  is  already  a  classic  of  the  highest 
order,  and  needs  only  the  custom  of  hearing  in  order 
to  be  understood  even  by  the  very  young.  It  is  a 
wrong  because  it  should  be  a  part  of  the  educational 
birthright  of  every  English-speaking  child  to  be- 
come intimate  with  the  style  and  form  of  the  au- 
thorized version  of  King  James,  which,  as  Cardinal 
Newman,  himself  a  Catholic,  has  said,  can  never  be 
replaced  in  the  affections  of  the  English-speaking 
world  by  any  other  version. 

If  each  teacher  in  the  grade  schools  were  to  make 
it  a  custom  to  read  daily  chapters  or  passages  of  the 
authorized  version  to  the  school,  omitting  comment, 
I  cannot  perceive  that  public  objection  could  attach 
to  the  custom,  while,  in  the  way  of  gain,  not  a  child 
who  had  passed  through  a  series  of  years  under  the 
influence  of  such  readings  but  would  have  acquired 
ineradicable  impressions  of  the  highest  value  for 
the  development  of  both  his  intellectual  and  his 
moral  character. 


LETTER  IX. 
NATURE  AND   SCIENCE 

WHAT  is  called  "nature  study"  at  the  primary- 
end  and  "the  natural  sciences"  at  the  uni- 
versity end  of  a  school  career  forms  a  group  of  sub- 
jects which  in  matter  and  manner  stand  in  conscious 
contrast  with  the  humanities.  The  humanities  are 
concerned  with  men,  their  affairs,  ideas,  expression ; 
the  study  of  nature  is  concerned  with  those  condi- 
tions under  which  men  live  that  are  beyond  human 
power  to  create — with  the  whole  environment  of 
life,  in  short,  with  the  physical  world.  History  is 
the  center  and  frame  of  the  humanities;  cos- 
mology, the  architecture  of  the  universe,  is  the  cen- 
ter and  frame  of  the  study  of  nature.  The  two 
groups  of  studies  are  thus  contrasting  and  com- 
plementary ;  one  might  well  put  it,  that  the  study  of 
nature  and  the  sciences  gives  the  staging  and  scen- 
ery, the  study  of  the  humanities  gives  the  action  of 
the  drama  of  life.  Neither  is  dispensable  to  a  true 
enlightenment. 

The  great  purpose  of  the  study  of  nature  is  to 
give  the  setting  of  life.  It  must  give  a  conception 
of  the  form  of  the  heavens  and  of  the  movements 
of  the  stars,  and  of  the  sun  and  earth,  and  of  the 

87 


88  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

changing  hours  of  the  day  and  seasons  of  the  year; 
and  this  we  call  astronomy.  It  must  give  a  concep- 
tion of  the  structure  and  formation  of  the  earth  on 
which  we  dwell,  zone  and  clime,  sea  and  continent  ; 
and  this  we  call  geology  and  geography.  It  must 
give  an  understanding  of  the  forms  of  movement, 
molar  and  molecular,  and  of  all  the  varied  energies 
which  appear  to  us  as  material  things  and  phenom- 
ena ;  and  this  we  call  mechanical,  physical,  chemical 
science.  It  must  also  give  an  understanding  of  the 
development,  variety,  and  activities  of  living  beings, 
vegetal  and  animal;  and  this  is  biological  science, 
with  botany  and  zoology  as  its  fundamental  divi- 
sions, and  many  special  branches — morphological, 
physiological,  pathological — dealing  with  particular 
phases  of  the  complex  whole.  Finally,  the  scientific 
study  of  nature  includes  the  study  of  man  himself  as 
an  animal  and  as  a  social  being — for  man,  too,  is  a 
part  of  the  furniture  of  creation;  and  here  we  have 
the  anthropological  and  psychological  sciences,  the 
political,  economic,  and  social  sciences. 

In  the  pursuit  of  studies  chosen  from  so  vast  an 
array  of  subjects  it  is  all  too  easy  to  become  ab- 
sorbed in  the  details  of  special  mastery  at  a  cost  of 
the  loss  of  an  understanding  of  what  the  general  ob- 
jects of  the  study  of  nature  should  be.  It  is  clear 
enough  that  the  teaching  of  nature  study  and  of  the 
sciences  can  be  intelligent  only  when  these  objects 
are  understood  by  the  teacher  and  made  plain  to  the 
pupil.     It   becomes,    therefore,    the   teacher's   first 


NATURE  AND  SCIENCE 


89 


CLA55IF/CAT/0n    OF    THE   ScilHCEd 


5ciENCE5      OF     Method 


I       Linguistic     =   GJJflMMAR,    Logic 

X         MATHEMflTICfiL=  All     Br«NCKC3      Of     ^?flTH£:MflTICS. 

nr      Technical     =      LflBORflTOT?r     «no     Fitlo  TccHMour 


Sciences    op    N/iture 


THEORTTiCflL 


"Pktjicul 


IE 
BlOI.OglCflL\ 

(0  Zo»Loo*cni,l 


DrscBipnyt 


Grnrnc 


DCSCRIPTIVC 


Gehetic 


,1  STROnO  Mr 

Gco6i?flp«r 

f1CCH.1K/C3 

Astrophysics 

GroLOsr 

T^tTircs    ♦•  CHfMiSTur 

MoRPKouo&r 
FWraio  Loar 

BlOHOMPCS 

Onroscnr 
RfTLoecNr 

PflTKOLOOr 


/Ippmed 
/•^ >. 

Chronome-trv 

5uT?VEYING 
ENGIMCE'Rin& 


5c;Er(CE5    op    M/^ry 


Theouctical 


PsrCHOPHTSICAL 


nrnROPOLooioflL 
5ociolo&» 

rcONOMICS 

Political    Science: 
Ethics   i- Tbi.iTic.4 

^riTHrTic6 

Metaphysics 


,  N 

PSYCKOuOGr 

^TMOLOSY 

TTHNOLOSr 
TI(1L01.06Y 


fipPUCD 

/'T " N 

I        nEDiciNr 

I        flnHLYSis    iio 
/         MflmTEtiflMCC    or 

LflvY 
fl«Al.Y3l3    »no    GuiOflNCE 
OF    HuflAN    T^551BILiri£5 

Ckiticism  of    LiFfS 
EriOt      UtO     /|lM3 


90  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

duty  to  keep  their  definition  always  in  mind,  as  a 
kind  of  mental  reservation  guiding  all  instruction 
even  if  not  explicit  in  it. 

These  objects  of  the  study  of  nature  are  in  gen- 
eral represented  by  the  distinction  between  "theoret- 
ical" and  "applied"  science — and  there  is  not  a  sin- 
gle field  of  science  which  has  not  these  two  forms. 
Theoretical  science  is  that  which  undertakes  no 
more  than  to  answer  the  questions  put  by  our  nat- 
ural human  curiosity.  "All  men  by  nature  desire 
to  know,"  is  the  first  sentence  in  Aristotle's  Meta- 
physics, and  it  expresses  a  truth  of  human  nature 
which  the  eating  of  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowl- 
edge in  Eden  (for  which,  I  imagine,  none  of  us  are 
profoundly  sorry)  is  but  another  and  allegorical  ex- 
pression. As  put  in  a  more  modern  form,  science 
is  first  of  all  an  investigation  into  truth — truth  for 
its  own  sake,  irrespective  of  all  desires  or  prefer- 
ences. This  may  be  thrown  into  relation  with  the 
great  fundamental  fact  that  all  theoretical  science 
is  interested  in  the  discovery  of  law,  and  that  the 
phrase  "scientific  law"  has  become  for  us  the  mod- 
ern substitute  for  an  ancient  notion  of  fate  or  ne- 
cessity. The  laws  of  science — such  as  the  great 
physical  law  of  gravitation,  or  the  great  biological 
law  of  the  evolution  of  life — are  not  at  all  "laws" 
in  our  human  and  legal  sense  of  the  word.  Scien- 
tific laws  are  impartial  statements  of  how  natural 
forces  operate,  of  how  things  act,  whether  these 
things  be  moving  stars,  blossoming  plants,  or  flue- 


NATURE  AND  SCIENCE  91 

tuating  prices  on  the  stock  exchange.  Political  and 
moral  laws  are  imperative  statements  of  how  men 
ought  to  act  under  given  circumstances.  We 
"obey"  scientific  law  only  in  the  sense  that  there  is 
no  possible  deviation  from  it;  we  "obey"  civil  and 
moral  law  only  in  a  sense  which  implies  possible 
disobedience.  Furthermore,  the  fundamental  aim 
of  knowledge  of  natural  law  is  knowledge  of  truth; 
it  answers  to  an  appetite  for  knowing  and  under- 
standing. The  fundamental  aim  of  civil  law  is  at- 
tainment of  the  good;  it  answers  to  our  hopes  for 
the  betterment  of  society. 

The  first  gift  of  the  study  of  nature  is,  then,  re- 
spect— nay,  reverence,  for  the  truth,  irrespective  of 
its  effect  upon  us.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  the  study 
of  nature  and  of  the  sciences  is  a  liberalizing  study, 
and  a  proper  part  of  a  liberal  education.  Of  course, 
in  last  analysis,  we  believe  the  effect  to  be  the  good 
of  society.  It  is  good  just  because  it  develops  a  spe- 
cial attitude  of  mind  which  we  call  the  "scientific 
attitude,"  and  which  is  an  attitude  of  impartiality 
and  exactitude  toward  facts,  and  of  an  earnest  de- 
sire to  get  at  and  understand  all  facts,  and  therefore 
of  a  love  of  truth  in  all  things.  And  this  attitude 
of  fairness  and  truthfulness  is  of  immense  value  to 
men  in  all  their  social  relations.  Who,  for  exam- 
ple, can  imagine  any  attitude  in  a  judge  that  would 
better  serve  justice  than  must  a  love  of  the  truth? 
Or  who  can  conceive  a  legislator  better  fitted  for  his 
task  than  by  an  ability  to  see  facts  and  conditions 


92  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

impartially  and  impersonally?  The  "scientific  at- 
titude" is  of  so  enormous  an  importance  to  society 
that  the  greatest  educational  effort  is  justified  in  se- 
curing its  development  in  the  greatest  possible  num- 
ber of  citizens;  and  it  would  be  a  negligent  teacher 
of  science,  or  of  that  "nature  study"  which  leads 
up  to  science,  who  could  ever  forget  that  his  first 
and  paramount  purpose  must  be  the  cultivation  of 
the  love  of  truth  and  the  power  to  perceive  it.  This 
is  the  corner-stone  value  of  science  to  society,  and 
therefore  in  education. 

What  are  called  the  "empirical  method"  and  the 
"virtue  of  suspended  judgment,"  or  "scientific  cau- 
tion," are  all  but  special  phases  of  the  scientific  at- 
titude, and  all  rest  upon  the  fundamental  fact  of 
the  love  of  truth.  The  empirical  method  means 
really  nothing  more  than  painstaking  in  the  discov- 
ery of  facts;  suspended  judgment  means  open- 
mindedness  in  the  reading  of  facts,  and  a  willing- 
ness to  change  one's  mind.  These,  also,  as  anyone 
must  recognize,  are  social  virtues  of  the  greatest 
value  in  human  society — where  men  are  all  too 
ready  to  suspect  one  another's  motives  with- 
out due  investigation.  Indeed,  one  might  say  that 
just  as  the  scientific  love  of  truth  is  but  a  special 
cultivation  of  the  virtue  of  honesty,  so  scientific 
caution  is  but  a  special  cultivation  of  the  virtue  of 
generosity — and  all  that  cultivates  such  virtues  can- 
not but  make  for  the  good  of  society. 

Thus  it  is  that  while  theoretical  science  does  not 


NATURE  AND  SCIENCE  93 

aim  directly  at  the  good  of  society,  indirectly  it  is  of 
immense  significance  in  the  securing  of  the  general 
good.  "Applied  science,"  on  the  other  hand,  is  the 
direct  use  of  scientific  truths  for  the  social  good. 
"Applied  science"  means  merely  that  knowledge  ac- 
quired in  the  theoretical  spirit  is  used  in  the  secur- 
ing of  desirable  ends.  A  most  obvious  science  of 
this  sort  is  medicine,  which  has  its  theoretical  aspect 
(as  when  the  physician  speaks  of  his  patient  as  a 
"case"),  but  which  is  and  is  felt  by  most  persons  to 
be  cultivated  primarily  for  the  healing  of  the  sick. 
Not  less  obviously  useful  are  engineering  and  agri- 
cultural science,  in  each  case  representing  the  appli- 
cation of  facts  discovered  in  the  theoretical  spirit  to 
the  needs  and  enterprises  of  men.  In  truth  there  is 
no  science  that  has  not  its  form  of  application;  even 
the  astronomer's  knowledge  of  stars  measurelessly 
remote  from  earth  is  practically  important  in  the  ob- 
servations by  means  of  which  he  regulates  and  syn- 
chronizes all  the  clocks  that  strike  together,  telling 
the  hours  of  work  and  the  hours  of  rest  throughout 
the  civilized  world.  Nay,  the  applications  of 
science  are  so  many  and  important  that  they  are 
rather  a  menace  to  the  teacher's  and  the  student's 
understanding,  than  a  help  to  it ;  and  one  of  the  se- 
rious problems  which  educators  face  at  this  hour  is 
the  quite  inevitable  tendency  of  all  minds  to  empha- 
size the  value  of  applied  science  to  the  clouding  of 
their  consciousness  of  the  prior  and  greater  import- 
ance of  theoretical  science.     For  unless  the  cultiva- 


94  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

tion  of  the  "scientific  attitude"  be  maintained  in  its 
purity,  by  the  cultivation  of  theoretical  science,  the 
whole  structure  of  scientific  knowledge  will  inevit- 
ably degenerate  into  a  series  of  specialized  crafts  or 
trades :  the  mechanic,  the  inventor,  and  the  virtuoso 
will  take  the  place  of  the  investigator,  and  scientific 
discovery  will  be  at  an  end.  There  is  profound 
significance  in  the  fact  that  in  this  present  tremen- 
dous war  the  methods  which  the  government  of  the 
United  States  is  making  most  use  of  have  been  con- 
trived for  it,  not  by  specialist  scientists  of  the  great 
manufacturing  plants,  but  by  the  theoretical  scien- 
tists of  our  universities;  and  when  the  history  of  the 
war  is  written  no  single  class  of  men  in  the  nation 
will  be  found  to  have  done,  I  will  not  say  more,  but 
so  much  for  the  common  cause,  as  have  the  trained 
university  men. 

In  so  fully  sketching  the  importance  of  the  study 
of  nature  in  education,  I  have  allowed  myself  little 
space  for  a  consideration  of  the  method.  But  little 
space  is  needed  if  the  fundamental  fact  be  grasped 
that  the  teacher's  first  and  constant  task  must  be 
the  cultivation  of  the  virtues  of  the  scientific  atti- 
tude. 

As  in  the  case  of  history,  where  a  time-form  is  the 
elementary  necessity,  so  in  the  case  of  nature  study 
my  own  view  is  that  a  space- form  is  the  elementary 
necessity.  The  first  book  I  can  remember  being  fas- 
cinated by  (before  I  could  read)  was  a  little  yellow- 
backed  geography  having  for  frontispiece  a  crude 


NATURE  AND  SCIENCE  95 

diagram  of  our  solar  system — sun,  moon  and  earth 
— Jupiter  with  his  sateHtes,  Saturn  with  his  rings. 
That  gave  me  a  space-form  for  my  knowledge  of  na- 
ture— w^hich  has,  I  trust,  grown  with  the  years ;  and 
I  cannot  imagine  a  better  introduction.  Nowadays 
teachers  begin  the  study  of  geography  with  the 
schoolyard  and  town,  and  then  go  on  to  county,  state, 
nation,  and  globe — like  a  sort  of  induction;  and  I  do 
not  quarrel  with  the  method  except  when  it  is  used 
alone.  But  just  as  in  the  study  of  history,  we 
should  begin  not  only  with  the  near  story  of  the 
United  States  but  also  with  the  remote  one  of  an- 
cient history  and  the  Biblical  time-form,  so  in  the 
study  of  nature  we  should  unite  with  attention 
turned  to  the  near  environment  an  attention  di- 
rected to  the  world  as  a  whole.  By  and  large,  I  be- 
lieve the  most  valuable  single  piece  of  apparatus  a 
school  can  own  is  a  good  globe  (or  even  a  poor 
one).  As  the  Greeks  wisely  saw,  the  circle  and  the 
sphere  are  the  simplest  of  spatial  ideas,  and  the  be- 
ginning infant  is  already  endowed  with  an  under- 
standing that  will  enable  him  to  grasp  the  notion 
that  he  lives  upon  a  revolving  ball,  and  that  all  celes- 
tial bodies  move  in  gracious  curves. 

In  the  advance,  on  through  geography  and  ele- 
mentary astronomy  to  the  story  of  the  earth's  for- 
mation and  the  classification  of  plant  and  animal  life, 
the  grades  will  have  performed  their  necessary  in- 
troduction to  the  more  detailed  work  undertaken 
by  the  high  school  and  college.     Certainly,  it  should 


96  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

not  be  until  the  high  school  is  reached  that  any  em- 
phasis should  be  laid  upon  method — or  the  word  it- 
self used.  Children  look  outwardly  and  wonder- 
ingly  at  a  vastly  interesting  world,  and  it  could  be 
only  crime  to  call  their  attention  to  themselves — for 
the  study  of  method  is  but  a  form  of  introspection. 
Nor  should  method  ever  (short  of  a  post-graduate 
college)  be  made  more  important  than  the  matter; 
there  is  an  immense  lot  to  be  learned  in  the  study 
of  nature,  and  there  need  be  but  one  rule  in  its  in- 
culcation, and  that  is  that  it  be  taught  sanely.  My 
notion  of  sanity  in  nature  study  I  have,  I  trust, 
made  clear;  it  riiust  be  the  constant  and  conscious 
preservation  of  a  mind  single  upon  the  truth,  seek- 
ing ever  to  conform  to  the  good  scientific  rule  of 
parsimony  (not  to  use  hypotheses  beyond  necessity) 
and  to  give,  if  naught  else,  a  true  comprehension  to 
the  meaning  of  law  as  applied  to  the  world  of  na- 
ture's phenomena. 

There  is,  of  course,  also  a  humanistic  phase  to  the 
study  of  science,  and  this  is  the  study  of  the  history 
of  science,  which  is  today  rapidly  coming  forward 
as  a  university  branch.  Indeed,  a  most  interesting 
theory  of  a  "new  humanism"  based  primarily  upon 
the  history  of  science  is  advocated  by  George  Sar- 
ton,  in  a  recent  number  of  Scicntia,  in  which  the  au- 
thor would  replace  the  "old  humanism"  almost 
wholly  by  a  study  of  scientific  progress.  This,  it  is 
needless  for  me  to  say,  is  going  beyond  reason.  But 
I  do  believe,  and  have  long  believed,  that  the  study 


NATURE  AND  SCIENCE  97 

of  the  history  of  science  is  one  of  the  most  valuable 
of  the  means  open  to  a  liberal  training  in  the 
schools;  and  were  I  the  organizer  of  college  cur- 
ricula, I  should  place  it  in  the  first  year  of  college 
work,  encouraging  students  to  enter  into  the  special- 
ized and  limited  work  of  the  laboratory  courses  only 
after  they  had  made  such  a  survey  of  the  growth 
and  meaning  of  the  study  of  nature,  in  the  history 
of  mankind,  as  should  serve  to  keep  clear  before 
them  the  great  ends  which  this  study  should  follow 
and  the  great  benefits  which  it  may  bring  to  the  state 
and  to  the  ennoblement  of  human  nature. 


LETTER  X 

CRAFTS  AND  VOCATIONS 

IN  several  of  the  letters  which  I  have  written  I 
have  touched  upon  the  "vocational"  side  of 
public  school  education,  stating  that  vocational 
training  should  and  must  hold  its  place  in  our 
schooling,  even  if  that  place  be  properly  but  a  sec- 
ondary one.  I  shall  now  try  to  make  my  view  of 
this  important  matter  clear. 

And  to  begin  with,  I  would  emphasize  anew  the 
fundamental  fact  that  in  a  democratic  government, 
such  as  ours,  the  first  vocation  of  everyone  is  his 
citizenship.  A  democratic  citizen  is  called  upon, 
not  merely  to  execute,  but  to  judge  public  policies; 
and  the. power  of  judgment,  which  is  the  power  of 
seeing  things  impersonally  and  impartially,  with  no 
side-glance  at  one's  private  interests,  is  the  power 
which  public  education  must  first  of  all  cultivate. 
This,  I  am  convinced,  can  only  be  done  by  means 
of  the  education  we  call  liberal — by  means  of  the 
study  of  mathematics  and  literature,  of  history  and 
science,  pursued  not  as  leading  to  a  private  profes- 
sion, but  as  leading  to  a  public  understanding.  The 
liberal  schooling  is  the  vocational  training  of  the 
citizen — of  that  capacity  in  a  man  by  reason  of 

99 


100  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

which  he  may  even  be  called  upon  to  condemn  him- 
self (as  Rousseau  remarks)  for  the  sake  of  the  law 
— and  without  such  training  no  democracy  can  long 
continue  to  be  a  democracy.  "Vocational  training," 
when  it  means,  as  so  often  it  is  taken  to  mean,  the 
study  of  a  craft  or  profession  to  the  neglect  of  lib- 
eral culture,  is  proper  enough  in  an  aristocratic  or 
autocratic  form  of  government;  but,  pursued  in 
this  narrow  fashion,  it  spells  the  ruin  of  democratic 
states. 

What,  then,  should  be  our  attitude  toward  the 
technical  elements  in  education  and  toward  techni- 
cal schools?  How  far  are  "industrialism"  and  "vo- 
cationalism"  justified  in  state-supported,  free  educa- 
tion? In  particular,  what  are  the  social  and  what 
are  the  private  values  in  such  training? 

As  a  first  principle  it  may  be  laid  down  that  free 
technical  training  by  the  state  is  justified  only  by  its 
good  to  the  state.  The  work  of  modern  civilization 
is  tremendously  complex;  it  can  be  carried  on  and 
preserved  only  where  there  is  present  in  society  a 
large  number  of  technicians.  There  must  be  physi- 
cians, lawyers,  clergymen,  commercial  experts,  en- 
gineers of  a  dozen  varieties,  trained  agriculturists 
— and.  indeed,  specialists  in  things  near  and  remote, 
from  decipherers  of  cuneiform  inscriptions  to  tea- 
tasters  and  parasitologists.  All  of  these  are  neces- 
sary to  the  state;  and  to  satisfy  such  necessities 
the  state  very  properly  provides  the  educational 
means.     From  the  point  of  view  of  the  public  in- 


CRAFTS  AND  VOCATIONS  101 

terest  it  is,  and  should  be,  only  accidental  that  this 
training  works  to  the  advantage  of  those  who  re- 
ceive the  education;  they  are  trained  for  the  public 
service,  not  for  their  private  welfares.  This  fact  is 
of  vast  importance  and  ought  to  be  made  the  guid- 
ing principle  in  all  organization  of  vocational  work. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  another  type  of  public  in- 
terest that  is  subserved  bv  technical  education,  which 
falls  in  accord  with  private  interest.  I  mean  what 
is  called  the  general  welfare  of  a  citizenry.  A  state, 
and  in  particular  a  democratic  state,  exists  only  for 
the  welfare  of  its  citizens,  and  no  small  part  of  this 
welfare  is  the  mental  comfort  which  comes  of  con- 
genial employment.  When,  therefore,  a  state  is 
giving  a  boy  with  a  taste  for  art  or  a  gift  for  engi- 
neering the  opportunity  of  cultivating  his  taste  or 
gift,  it  is  serving  not  only  its  own  interests,  in  pro- 
ducing an  artist  or  an  engineer  as  a  member  of  so- 
ciety, but  it  is  serving  its  proper  end  in  finding  a 
congenial  service  for  its  citizen.  The  congeniality 
of  the  service  will  be  reflected  back  in  better  efifort, 
a  heightened  love  of  country,  a  happier  life, — all 
tending  to  the  common  good.  This,  of  course,  is 
not  distinctive  of  vocational  education;  it  is  a  part 
of  the  gift  of  all  education;  but  it  is  in  opening  the 
choice  of  a  vocation  to  youth  naturally  endowed 
with  ambition  that  it  is  most  in  evidence. 

Such  are  the  public  benefits  of  vocational  school- 
ing ;  the  private  benefits  are  also  two  in  kind.  There 
is,   first,   the   "bread   and   butter"    value — training 


102  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

for  money-getting;  expert  knowledge  or  skill  calls 
for  unusual  endowments  and  effort  and  it  com- 
mands, as  a  rule,  more  than  the  average  financial 
returns  of  labor.  This  is  a  fact  so  obvious  that  it 
needs  no  emphasis,  and  it  is  a  fact  far  too  often 
emphasized.  For  it  is  clearly  but  a  selfish  motive, 
in  itself;  and  in  matters  of  education,  least  of  all, 
can  we  afford  to  lay  stress  upon  appeals  to  self- 
interest.  The  vocational  training  is  necessary  to  the 
state,  and  should  be  included  in  educational  oppor- 
tunity; but  every  youth  undertaking  the  mastery  of 
a  vocation  should  have  it  constantly  impressed  upon 
his  mind  that  the  object  of  the  state,  in  giving  him 
unusual  opportunties,  is  to  make  him  publicly  serv- 
iceable, not  privately  wealthy.  His  debt  is  to  the 
state ;  and  for  all  that  he  receives,  above  the  oppor- 
tunity for  practical  service,  he  owes  gratitude  and 
the  obligations  of  enlightened  citizenship. 

In  a  second  mode  vocational  training  is  of  pri- 
vate benefit.  Here  I  refer  to  the  craftsmanship  and 
technique  given  by  the  forms  of  special  training. 
Hand  and  eye  are  made  adept  and  co-ordinate  at 
bench  and  forge.  Powers  of  observation,  delicacy 
of  adjustment,  sense  of  precision,  all  are  cultivated 
by  the  laboratory.  The  library,  I  have  said,  is  the 
core  and  support  of  liberal  culture,  for  books  open 
out  to  us  ranges  of  experience  vastly  beyond  any- 
thing we  can  hope  to  traverse  in  the  body.  None 
the  less,  it  is  true  that  this  experience  must  always 
be  in  essence  imaginative;  book  knowledge  moves 


CRAFTS  AND  VOCATIONS  103 

in  a  realm  of  ideas,  of  forms,  which,  however  rich 
and  broad,  must  always  lack  something  of  the 
reality  of  what  we  directly  and  bodily  undergo. 
Training  in  craftsmanship  and  technique  gives  the 
necessary  complement  to  the  cultivation  of  the  ideal 
powers,  leading  to  readiness  in  bodily  adaptation 
and  quickness  in  sense-discrimination.  The  impor- 
tance of  such  training  of  hand  and  eye  is  very  great ; 
but  it  should  not  be  overlooked  that,  compared  with 
the  mastery  of  books,  it  is  a  very  simple  problem. 
Life  itself  is  a  manual  teacher  for  the  normal  human 
being,  and  it  is  certainly  the  rare  child  who  does  not 
get  far  more  benefit  from  the  rough-and-tumble 
world  of  out-of-doors  than  from  all  the  shops  of  all 
the  schools.  The  school  shops  give  certain  valu- 
able additions,  and,  in  conjunction  with  the  labo- 
ratory, a  sound  training  in  exactitude,  but  it  is  na- 
ture herself  who  gives  the  first  instruction  and  last 
diploma  in  the  active  realm  of  experience. 

A  clear  perception  that  the  proper  benefits  of  vo- 
cational training  are  such  as  I  have  outlined,  and 
that  this  training  stands  in  such  subordination  to 
the  liberal  branches  as  I  have  indicated,  is  the  safest 
guide  to  its  right  introduction  into  the  curriculum. 
There  is  no  question  but  that  the  average  boy  or  girl 
has  time,  along  with  liberal  studies,  for  a  very  thor- 
ough discipline  in  craftsmanship.  Indeed,  prop- 
erly handled,  such  discipline  comes  rather  as  a  phase 
of  sport  than  as  a  toil;  for  children  are  naturally 
drawn  to  tasks  where  muscles  and  sense  are  called 


104  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

into  play.  My  notion — which  I  beheve  I  mentioned 
in  an  earher  letter — is  that  the  shop  and  laboratory 
end  of  the  school  plant  ought  to  be  open  and  busy 
at  all  hours  of  the  day;  and  I  hold  to  this  because  I 
cannot  doubt  that  the  mere  presence  of  usable  ap- 
paratus will  act  as  a  magnet  to  draw  youthful  ener- 
gies into  activity.  This  is  especially  true  in  cities, 
where  the  youngster's  opportunities  for  indepen- 
dent or  unpoliced  action  are  but  too  few  and  ill  con- 
sidered. There  is  an  eternal  and  invincible  love  of 
discovery  and  invention  in  the  soul  of  youth,  so 
that  with  a  minimum  of  guidance  children  become 
naturalists  and  makers  and  artists.  One  need  but 
supply  the  magnifying  lens,  the  brushes,  the  tools, 
and  give  the  privilege  of  their  free  use,  and  half 
the  training  is  accomplished. 

On  this  foundation  of  the  youngster's  native 
eagerness  for  creative  employment,  the  earlier 
phases  of  manual  and  technical  work  ought  wholly 
to  rest.  The  good  which  comes  of  trained  hand 
and  trained  sense  would  thus  come,  and  come  nat- 
urally, with  no  thought  of  a  special  application. 
The  practical  understanding  of  wood-working,  or 
mechanical  and  electrical  contrivance,  of  gardening, 
of  the  in-door  arts,  all  should  find  foundation  in 
opportunities  offered  by  the  school,  but  taken  to  in 
a  vacation  spirit,  with  little  thought  of  gradings  and 
none  of  vocation.  That  such  knowledge  might  be- 
come useful  later  on  in  life  should  safely  be  left  to 
happy  chance. 


CRAFTS  AND  VOCATIONS  105 

Indeed,  no  youth  for  whom  Hfe  holds  the  oppor- 
tunity for  a  complete  education  ought  to  be  think- 
ing of  vocation  short  of  college  years.  Children 
surely  must  be  taught  to  work,  and  youth  to  be  in- 
dustrious, but  this  need  not  and  should  not  mean  the 
selection  of  a  profession  at  the  age  of  six  or  sixteen. 
The  selection  of  a  profession  is  a  private  and  selfish 
concern,  and  youth,  which  all  men  agree  to  name 
generous,  is  no  time  for  the  emphasis  of  selfish  in- 
terests. Rather,  let  each  youngster  be  taught  that 
the  work  of  his  time  of  life  is  the  work  of  getting  a 
general  understanding  of  the  structure  and  meaning 
of  society  as  a  whole,  in  all  its  history  and  all  its 
problems,  and  that  the  state  can  allow  him  what- 
ever time  he  needs  for  the  finding  of  his  own  appro- 
priate economic  niche.  I  am  no  believer  in  short-cut 
courses  to  trades  and  professions;  the  years  that 
appear  to  be  saved  by  such  devices  are  dearly  bought 
by  the  society  that  provides  them  and  by  the  indi- 
vidual who  avails  himself  of  them.  "Speeding  up" 
is  no  part  of  a  sound  education,  and  the  teacher 
should  be  the  last  of  men  to  urge  the  young  to  be 
thinking  of  time. 

"Vocationalism"  is  the  noisest  cry  of  our  times 
in  the  educational  world,  and  there  is  certainly  no 
danger  that  the  thing  itself  will  be  deprived  of  its 
proper  place  in  the  public  schooling.  But  there  is 
danger,  indeed,  a  whole  group  of  dangers,  attend- 
ing its  placing.  The  first  of  these  is  disproportion- 
ate and  untimely  emphasis  of  the  importance  of  vo- 


106  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

cation  in  life.  Society  itself,  the  whole  environment 
of  an  industrial  and  commercial  world,  sufficiently 
emphasizes  this  importance;  and  there  is  really  no 
danger  that  young  America  will  grow  up  to  idle- 
ness; work  is  a  part  of  our  national  genius.  The 
teacher,  therefore,  and  the  schools,  should  be  indul- 
gently skeptical  of  the  boy's  first  ambitions,  and 
never  rush  to  set  him  in  them ;  he  has  plenty  of  time 
to  change,  and  if  he  is  a  growing  and  energetic  boy 
will  change  them  many  a  time  before  his  school  days 
are  at  an  end.  Let  him,  if  he  must  be  a  tradesman, 
be  jack-of-all-trades,  at  least  in  boyhood;  special- 
ization is  only  a  form  of  slow  suicide. 

Again  there  is  the  danger  of  distorted  attitude. 
This  comes  from  the  teacher's  side  quite  as  much 
as  from  the  pupil's,  for  it  is  the  teacher  who  can 
and  should  keep  clear  before  the  pupil's  mind  his 
dignity  as  a  citizen  and  his  responsibilities  as  a  citi- 
zen. I  suspect  that  if  even  the  kindergartner  were 
to  say  to  herself,  if  not  to  the  small  fry,  when  she 
greets  her  brood  of  a  morning,  "Fellow  citizens!" 
— I  suspect  that  her  teaching  would  be  philosophi- 
cally sounder  and  practically  safer;  I  am  sure  that 
this  is  true  of  the  upward  stages.  After  six  months 
of  school  I  asked  my  eight-year-old  what  he  had 
learned,  what  new  thing,  out  of  his  schooling.  With 
much  deliberation  :  "Well,  I've  learned  a  new  word, 
daddy."  "What  is  it?"  "Commerce."  Commerce! 
It  is  a  good  and  significant  word;  but  I  cannot  but 
feel  that  it  was  an  evil  chance  (for  I  refuse  to  credit 


CRAFTS  AND  VOCATIONS  '       107 

it  to  the  school)  that  gave  him  just  this  as  the  first 
meaning  of  education. 

Teachers,  Hke  the  other  members  of  the  modern 
state,  are  by  force  of  human  hmitation  speciaHsts. 
As  we  pass  on  to  high  school  and  college,  they  be- 
come narrowed  and  differentiated  to  limited  fields 
of  learning  and  instruction.  But  teachers,  most  of 
all,  should  fight  against  the  distortions  of  sanity 
which  specialization  brings  in  its  train.  For  it  is 
not  only  their  own  souls  that  are  at  stake,  but  the 
souls  of  the  younger  generations  passing  under  their 
yearly  influences.  It  is  all  too  easy  to  see  the  im- 
portance of  one's  own  field,  and  to  make  it  supreme. 
It  is  hard,  indeed,  to  maintain  a  level  view  of  all 
the  various  activities  that  make  up  the  round  of 
human  life.  But  the  end  which  that  view  subserves 
is  the  preservation  of  the  truth  and  vitality  of  the 
democracy,  and  no  effort  can  be  too  arduous  when 
so  great  an  end  is  in  contemplation. 

I  have  said,  once  before,  that  education  in  a  demo- 
cratic state  is  necessarily  expensive.  It  is  so  just  be- 
cause it  must  first  of  all  be  liberal.  This  does  not 
mean  that  the  vocation  can  be  neglected;  the  com- 
plexities of  civilization  effectually  prevent  that.  But 
it  does  mean  that  the  vocation  must  be  delayed,  ai?d 
that  the  educational  period  of  life  must  not  be  looked 
upon  (as  too  often  it  is)  as  but  a  preparation  for 
life,  a  kind  of  trades  apprenticeship.  Rather  it 
means  that  the  life  of  youth  and  the  years  of  school- 
ing must  be  viewed  as  citizens'  work  and  as  human 


108  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

right,  and  as  in  themselves  an  important  addition 
to  the  meaning  of  the  whole  of  life  to  the  whole  of 
society.  But  this  topic  is  important ;  it  deserves  an 
entire  letter,  and  that  shall  be  my  next. 


LETTER  XI 

THE  LIFE  OF  YOUTH 

ONE  of  the  aspects  of  public  education  which 
teachers,  more  than  others,  are  apt  to  forget 
is  that  the  schools  do  not  exist  solely  for  the  sake 
of  the  formal  instruction  given  in  them.  The  cur- 
riculum bulks  large  in  the  school  economy — that 
goes  without  saying;  and  all  other  activities  must 
be  organized  around  it;  it  represents  school  work, 
and  its  mastery  the  first  measure  of  the  school's 
efficiency.  But  still  it  ought  not  to  be  overlooked  by 
teachers  (as  it  is  little  likely  to  be  by  the  exuberant 
youth)  that  the  school  years  include  time  for  much 
more  than  the  formal  work,  or  that  there  are  school 
avocations  along  with  the  school  vocation  of  study. 
We  should  remember,  in  short,  that  the  word 
"school"  itself  harks  back  to  a  Greek  word  meaning 
"leisure"  and  that  leisure,  for  all  active  and  healthy 
human  beings,  signifies  not'  the  opportunity  for 
idleness,  but  the  opportunity  for  self-initiated  and 
self-directed  activity.  We  may  call  this  activity, 
play  or  sport  or  dreaming  or  invention,  but  wherever 
(as  in  all  these  things  it  does)  it  signifies  physical 
or  mental  action  of  a  spontaneous  sort  no  sane  judge 
of  human  nature  can  doubt  that  it  is  a  part  of  a 

109 


no  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

hale  and  normal  life,  and  no  true  teacher  can  wish 
for  a  school  system  which  fails  to  recognize  the 
right  of  these  free  activities  along  with  the  need 
for  the  disciplinary  ones  of  the  class  room. 

The  fact  for  first  emphasis  in  our  consciousness 
is  that  the  school  years  represent  a  time  of  life — the 
one  great  time  of  life,  we  are  prone  to  say  as  retro- 
spectively we  survey  it.  There  is  a  Puritanical  cant 
in  the  not  uncommon  talk  about  education  as  form- 
ing "a.  preparation  for  life"  and  of  the  school  years 
ending  in  a  "commencement" — as  if  the  pupil  were 
indeed  a  pupa,  hatching  into  an  existence  worth 
having  only  when  his  school  days  were  at  an  end. 
Along  with  this  goes  the  mature  person's  notion 
that  he  is  "supporting"  the  schools,  as,  in  a  sort, 
eleemosynary  incubators  of  citizens.  Both  of  these 
notions  should  be  reversed.  The  infant  in  the  pri- 
mary is  already  a  citizen,  doing  citizen's  work,  and 
therein  doing  a  part  of  his  life  work;  his  position 
in  society  is  just  as  dignified  and  honest  and  profit- 
able as  is  that  of  merchant,  farmer,  mechanic,  or 
judge,  and  he  is  entitled  to  entire  respect  for  what 
he  does.  Your  youngster  has  all  the  natural  marks 
of  homo  sapiens;  he  is  engaged  in  the  proper  duties 
of  homo  civilis;  to  him  belong,  therefore,  the  full 
rights  of  man  and  citizen,  returns  along  with  obli- 
gations. It  is  mere  pedagogic  Calvinism  to  look  upon 
childhood  as  corrupted  with  some  natural  damnation 
which  schooling  must  purify  out;  rather,  the  con- 
gregation  of   American   citizenship  has   room    for 


THE  LIFE  OF  YOUTH  111 

every  age  and  condition,  and  would  be  decrepit  with- 
out all — and  most  decrepit  were  infancy  rare. 

School  years,  then,  represent  citizens'  life  and 
school  work  is  citizens'  duty;  and  schools  are  no 
more  public  charities  than  are  court  houses  or  de- 
partment stores.  We  all  know  this,  upon  reflection, 
but  we  do  not  always  talk  as  if  we  were  bearing  it 
in  mind.  And  the  consequences  of  bearing  it  in 
mind  should  be  significant.  First,  they  should  keep 
— public  and  teacher  alike — lively  in  consciousness 
the  fact  that  the  school  child  has  rights  of  his  own ; 
and  second,  the  fact  that  it  is  not  wholly  yours  to 
define  these  rights,  that  the  child  himself  has  some- 
thing to  say  about  it. 

It  is  the  second  part  of  my  proposition  that  is 
important  in  the  saying  ( for  voices  enough  proclaim 
the  rights  of  children).  What  I  mean  is  this. 
Childhood  and  youth,  as  a  life  period,  has  its  own 
desires  and  its  own  satisfactions,  just  as  has  any 
other  period  of  life.  Infants,  for  example,  love 
rattles  and  gurglings  and  heels  kicking  the  free  air ; 
boys  of  ten  are  full  of  device,  directed  to  the  refor- 
mation of  the  world  by  the  simple  instrumentalities 
of  jack  knives,  string,  and  chalk,  and  our  back  yards 
are  the  scenes  of  many  Utopias;  their  elders  of 
fifteen  or  thereabouts,  are  fired  by  high  imaginings 
to  which  their  material  environment  offers  but  the 
most  trivial  response,  so  that  they  live  in  unseen 
politics,  which  we  name  their  ambitions.  We,  their 
sedate  elders  (and  note  "sedate,"  from  sedere,  to 


112  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

sit),  having  heels  weighted  to  earth,  and  having  our 
own  ideas  about  orderHness  in  the  back  yard,  and 
having  in  the  mill  of  experience,  found  more  chaff 
than  meal  in  our  ambitions — we  look  back  upon 
these  affairs  of  younger  years  and  dub  them  puerili- 
ties. Wisdom  is  ours,  we  say,  and  we  propose  to 
give  the  profit  of  it,  willy-nilly,  to  the  oncoming 
generation. 

This  is  wrong  from  both  the  youngster's  point  of 
view  and  our  own.  For  he,  in  order  that  his  soul 
may  be  his  own,  and  that  is  to  say  in  order  that  it 
may  be  a  freeman's  soul,  must  explore  it  for  him- 
self, and  very  much  in  his  own  way.  The  variety 
that  is  in  man  is  beyond  measure  wonderful,  but 
like  variety  elsewhere  in  nature  it  must  have  oppor- 
tunity of  unconstrained  growth  in  order  that  its 
character  and  possibilities  be  made  apparent.  Gar- 
dening is  a  capital  means  for  training  and  intensify- 
ing the  known  fruitfulness  of  known  plants;  but 
gardening,  when  the  crop  is  exclusively  in  mind, 
bends  to  order  and  uniformity  and  trim  compact- 
ness. Society,  with  its  laws  and  fashions  and  insti- 
tutions, is  all  to  the  gardener's  ideal ;  it  grows  what 
it  wishes  and  eradicates  what  it  wishes  (all  within 
limits),  and  produces  uniformity  and  order  and 
like-mindedness  of  man  with  man.  Certainly  this 
must  and  should  be  the  case  if  we  are  to  have  insti- 
tutional states  and  the  thing  we  call  civilization. 
But  certainly,  too,  we  must  not  overlook,  in  our 
anxiety  to  train  aright,  the  complementary  need  for 


THE  LIFE  OF  YOUTH  113 

the  spontaneous  off-shooting  of  human  ideals — orig- 
inahty,  invention,  all  that  makes  for  that  other 
thing  we  believe  in,  along  with  our  belief  in  order 
and  civilization,  which  we  call  human  progress.  Hu- 
man progress  is  always  in  the  hands  of  the  coming 
generation.  It  is  always  the  outcome  of  some  varia- 
tion in  human  appetite,  and  of  some  factor  in  which 
the  younger  contradicts  the  elder  mind  of  man.  This 
fact  alone,  should  keep  us  loth  to  bind  the  fancy  of 
youth  beyond  stringent  necessity. 

Of  course  there  is  necessity  for  some  restriction. 
I  am  not  urging  an  unlimited  indulgence,  at  home 
or  in  school.  I  have  not  forgotten  (and,  being  a 
teacher,  am  little  likely  to  forget)  that  study  is  the 
first  duty  of  the  schoolboy;  that  that  duty  is  a  social 
duty ;  and  that  its  observance  is  his  good  citizenship. 
I  believe  all  this ;  but  I  also  believe  that,  outside  the 
study  hours — and  there  should  be  an  ample  outside 
— there  should  be  encouragement  of  independence, 
there  should  be  freedom  from  useless  advice,  and 
above  all  that  the  youngster  has  a  right  to  his  own 
spiritual  privacy.  Each  man's  soul  is  his  own,  we 
say — and  we  should  mean  this  of  man,  female  or 
male,  youth  or  patriarch.  Only  so  meaning  can  we 
be  democrats  in  the  one  true  and  worthy  sense — 
which  is  not  that  sense  which  would  reduce  all  men 
to  a  level  of  likeness,  like  the  eggs  in  an  incubator, 
but  that  sense  which  would  have  an  ever-living 
faith  in  the  possibilities  of  human  nature  to  discover 
human  good. 


114  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

But  I  must  distinguish.     I  have  been  making  my 
convictions  as  to  the  right  of  youth  to  live  his  own 
hfe,  in  freedom  and  respect,  the  core  of  my  letter. 
All  along  I  have  had  a  covert  fear  lest  my  reader 
should  be  confusing  it  with  a  pedagogic  doctrine 
much  in  vogue  nowadays  for  which  I  have  only  dis- 
trust.    I  refer  to  the  extension  of  the  biological 
phenomena    of     recapitulation,     extended     beyond 
embryology  into  a  theory  of  conscious  life.     The 
development  of  the  human  embryo  does  indeed  re- 
capitulate, as  it  were  formally,  certain  striking  fea- 
tures of  animal  evolution.     But  to  apply  the  prin- 
ciple of  this  development  to  the  whole  conscious  life 
of  man,  and  in  particular  to  the  growth  of  mind 
from  childhood  through  youth  is  overpowering  ab- 
surdity.   As  ordinarily  so  expanded  the  theory  takes 
the  form  of  a  conception  of  serially  emerging  in- 
stincts,  each  coming  to  a   sudden  and  dangerous 
florescence,  and  each,  upon  its  appearance,  to  be  in- 
dulged and  condoned  and  doctored  until  the  stage 
of  danger  has  been  passed.     In  other  words,  the 
youth's   instincts    and    aptitudes   are    looked    upon 
about  as  are  measles  and  mumps  and  other  "chil- 
dren's diseases,"  as  best  met  by  exposure  at  the 
proper  age  and  an  immunizing  recovery.     In  prac- 
tice the  whole  notion  resolves  into  a  theory  of  spe- 
cial license.     Youth  is  to  be  given  a  permit  to  sow 
various  crops  of  wild  oats,  with  the  idea  that  a 
properly  indulged  experience  of  savagery  and  what- 
not  will  bring  an   eventual   absolution    from   con- 


THE  LIFE  OF  YOUTH  115 

tamination.  I  put  the  matter  strongly  because  I 
have  no  call  to  dwell  upon  it;  excepting  to  say  that 
the  older  type  of  educational  theory,  which  insisted 
that  duty  begins  with  even  childish  understandings, 
is  far  healthier  and  saner  and  everlastingly  truer  to 
human  nature.  My  own  theory,  that  the  child  is  a 
citizen,  is  akin  to  the  older  theory;  for  citizenship 
always  implies  duties.  It  involves  rights,  too,  and 
I  would  yield  to  none  in  conceding  to  the  youngster 
what  rightfully  belongs  to  his  years.  But  the  in- 
telligent granting  of  such  rights  can  never  be  based 
upon  a  notion  of  license,  such  as  the  recapitulation 
theory  has  introduced  into  modern  educational  ideas. 
True  citizenship  rests  upon  the  recognition  of  "fair 
play,"  and  children  themselves  are  ever  showing 
us  how  vivid  the  idea  of  fair  play  is  with  them. 
This  is  their  certificate  of  humanity,  and  gives  the 
lasting  lie  to  the  notion  that  they  must  live  through 
a  progressive  animality  in  order  to  become  men. 

But  I  have  yet  to  make  one  important  point.  Chil- 
dren and  youths  have  a  right  to  live  their  own  lives 
in  their  own  way,  subject  (as  all  of  us  are  subject) 
to  the  general  restriction  of  good  citizenship.  With 
this  right  go  duties,  and  I  should  say  that  of  them  all 
the  youngster's  first  duty  is  the  duty  of  happiness. 
I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  he  should  be  selfishly 
indulgent;  I  do  not  mean  that  his  own  way  should 
be  the  only  way  for  him;  nor  do  I  mean  that  the 
pleasant  and  pleasures  should  be  his  ideal.  But  I 
do  mean  that  in  the  social  gift,  the  gift  to  the  life  of 


116  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  state  and  to  the  morale  of  the  community,  which 
the  Hfe  of  youth  brings,  the  element  of  greatest  im- 
mediate value  is  the  cheery-mindedness  of  youth. 
There  is  naught  more  beautiful  in  the  world  than 
the  brightness  of  childhood,  at  play  upon  the  green, 
lost  in  imaginings,  musical  in  spontaneous  gaiety. 
So  also  with  youth's  elder  years;  all  the  world  loves 
a  lover,  not  because  he  is  a  lover,  but  because  he  is 
young;  and  the  years  of  youth  are  the  years  of 
many  charming  loves,  for  the  mind's  emprize  and 
the  soul's  courage  as  well  as  for  the  charms  of  body 
and  the  graces  of  expression  which  make  so  great 
a  part  of  our  world's  illumination.  Let  us  not  ask 
that  youth  express  itself  as  age  expresses  itself,  nor 
that  it  be  judged  by  the  standards  of  sober  years; 
for  there  would  be  but  a  drab  life  to  be  lived  if  the 
color  and  freshness  of  upspringing  fancy  were 
rooted  out.  Doubtless  youth's  joyousness  possesses 
for  us  no  tangible  economic  value;  on  the  other 
hand,  its  freedom  of  privilege  is  a  part  of  our  ma- 
terial work  to  provide;  but  is  there,  in  all  that  we 
do  materially,  a  single  endeavor  which  brings  to 
life  as  a  whole  so  much  of  unalloyed  good  as  does 
the  sunny  beauty  of  the  life  of  youth? 


LETTER  XII 

POETRY   AND   PAGEANTRY 

IN  my  second  letter,  I  think  it  was,  I  defined  the 
gifts  of  a  hberal  education  to  be  love  of  truth 
and  of  virtue  and  of  beauty.  If  I  did  not  remark 
in  that  connection  it  is  perhaps  occasion  to  do  so  now 
that  these  three  loves  are  the  essentially  educable 
interests  of  man's  nature.  They  are  by  no  means 
the  only  human  appetites  and  instincts;  we  possess 
many  others,  most  or  all  of  which  we  share  with 
the  balance  of  animal  creation,  and  most  of  which, 
like  the  instincts  of  the  animals,  come  to  their  due 
and  seasonal  expression  unurged  and  untrained. 
For  the  discovery  of  such  instinctive  desires — ours 
and  all  creation's — we  need  no  schooling;  although 
for  the  control  and  direction  of  their  proper  expres- 
sion nothing  is  more  important  than  the  power  of 
judgment  and  will  which  schooling  should  give. 
And  it  can  give  this  control  primarily  through  its 
education,  through  its  bringing  out  in  true  Socratic 
wise,  of  those  other  and  rarer  loves,  of  truth  and  vir- 
tue and  beauty,  with  which  man  is  so  strangely  and 
fortunately  endowed.  Self-control — to  fall  back  to 
the  old  phrase — is  not  only  the  highest  quality  of  the 
liberal  man,  but  it  is  his  essential  quality  and  the  very 

117 


118  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

one  which  makes  him  deserve  the  name  of  freeman ; 
and  it  is  self-control  \vhich  is  created  by  the  right 
schooling  of  the  educable  desires. 

Now  I  have  spoken  in  those  previous  letters 
which  dealt  with  the  curriculum  of  the  means  for 
bringing  the  love  of  truth  into  the  conscious  life. 
All  that  part  of  education  which  has  to  do  with  the 
imparting  of  the  tools  of  knowledge  and  with  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge  itself,  if  it  be  in  the  hands 
of  a  wise  and  truth-loving  teacher,  will  be  answered, 
in  the  pupil's  soul,  by  a  spontaneous  and  inevitable 
treasuring  of  all  that  is  honest  and  genuine  and 
true;  nature  has  seen  to  this,  human  nature,  in  giv- 
ing man,  out  of  whatever  Eden  constituted  his  first 
innocency,  an  insatiable  taste  for  the  fruit  of  the 
tree  of  knowledge. 

Further,  and  in  many  ways,  the  love  of  virtue 
comes  with  the  school's  direction  of  life.  This  is, 
indeed,  the  one  meaning  which  can  be  attached  to 
the  word  "discipline"  that  is  a  proper  value. 
Heaven  fore  fend  that  any  should  mistake  my  mean- 
ing here !  For  by  discipline  I  do  not  at  all  mean 
the  regimentation  of  youthful  lives,  with  all  the 
varied  paraphernalia  of  red-tape  regulation  and  un- 
intelligent suppression  and  punishment ;  that  is 
merely  fantastic  and  monstrous,  and  it  imprisons 
rather  than  frees  human  souls.  But  by  discipline  I 
mean  the  imparting  of  that  conception  of  duty  and 
desire  of  action  which  will  lead  a  mortal  to  put 
himself  through  the  test  of  effort,  that  he  himself 


POETRY  AND  PAGEANTRY  119 

may  conquer  the  obstacles  which  he  has  been  taught 
to  see  for  himself,  and  attain  ends  equally  self -fore- 
seen and  self-commanded.  Discipline  means  putting 
child  or  man  on  his  mettle,  in  situations  where 
mettle  is  needed — and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  school 
represents  and  should  rightfully  represent  hard 
work.  That  schoolroom  which  is  all  ease  and  de- 
light to  its  occupants,  which  never  wears  nor 
wearies,  is  surely  failing  of  a  portion  of  its  mission 
— the  training  of  the  ability  to  stand  up  under  pun- 
ishment which  no  man  can  safely  dispense  with. 

But  it  is  not  of  devotion  to  truth  nor  fidelity  to 
virtue  that  I  purpose  to  write  this  letter.  I  have 
mentioned  these  rather  to  indicate  that  their  culti- 
vation in  the  school  has  methods  of  its  own,  which 
are  not,  as  it  happens,  the  methods  which  educate 
the  third  great  love  of  the  human  spirit,  the  love  of 
beauty.  There  is  a  certain  measure  of  the  stem 
and  the  repressive  where  truth  and  virtue  are  the 
stake,  without  which  the  stake  is  lost.  Truth  is  a 
kind  of  alignment  amidst  the  deviousness  of  error, 
which  it  is  always  a  toil  to  follow — even  if  the  toil 
be  an  exalted  one.  Virtue  is  built  upon  inhibition, 
upon  the  suppression  of  the  waywardness  and  lassi- 
tudes everlastingly  besetting  mind  and  body,  and 
the  way  of  virtue,  too,  is  a  way  of  effort.  One  has 
to  be  tremendously  alive  to  keep  one's  moral  balance 
and  tremendously  alert  to  keep  one's  rational  bal- 
ance,— and  it  is  perhaps  this  that  leads  us  to  speak 
of  the  "uprightness"  of  virtuous  living  and  of  the 


120  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

"steadiness"  of  sound  thinking.  But  by  a  kindly 
compensation,  the  third  and  perhaps  final  love  of 
them  all,  the  love  of  beauty,  is  simple  and  easy  and 
spontaneous;  and  needs,  on  the  part  of  the  teacher, 
only  the  soft  magic  of  suggestion  in  order  that  it 
may  come  smilingly  into  flower. 

"Poetry  springs  from  two  instincts  lying  deep  in 
our  nature,  the  instinct  for  rhythm  and  the  instinct 
for  imitation."  If  Aristotle  had  pointed  to  no  truth 
save  this,  he  would  still  deserve  his  place  as  greatest 
of  all  the  critics  of  art.  The  instinct  for  rhythm  is 
the  expressive  instinct  and  at  the  same  time  the 
form-giving  instinct ;  it  reflects  in  its  forms  the  very 
subtlest  truth  of  physiology,  the  laws  of  life  itself, 
as  they  are  manifested  in  pulse  and  breathing  and 
indeed  in  that  whole  wonderful  organic  economy 
which  makes  of  a  living  creature  not  a  substance 
nor  a  chemical  compound,  but  a  form  of  motion 
and  an  equilibration  of  forces.  Why,  for  example, 
should  the  young  not  dance  when  the  whole  of  their 
supple  bodies,  like  the  foliage  of  a  tree  swaying  in  a 
summer  breeze,  is  a  complex  of  varied  and  rhythmic 
motion?  And  why  should  not  their  voices  echo  in 
pulsating  song  when  they  themselves,  body  and 
mind,  are  like  Aeolian  instruments  played  upon  by 
the  free  airs  of  heaven?  Singing  and  dancing  and 
flashing  eyes  are  the  very  image  of  the  fullness  of 
life  and  of  that  high  animation  which  out  of  a  hand- 
ful of  sunkist  dust  and  a  few  brief  years  creates  the 
form  of  man.     W' here  fore,  let  no  teacher  who  hon- 


POETRY  AND  PAGEANTRY  121 

ors  what  is  fairest  in  humankind  and  no  school 
which  would  truly  free  human  nature  fail  to  give 
opportunity,  and  indeed  the  cry  of  speed  to  all  who 
in  motion  and  song  will  at  once  praise  and  realize 
life's  beauty. 

As  the  instinct  for  rhythm  is  the  expressive  in- 
stinct, so  the  instinct  for  imitation  or  mimicry  is  the 
receptive  and  appreciative  one.  All  the  world  is 
full  of  colors  and  forms  and  sounds  and  motions  in 
themselves  tantalizing  to  the  shaping  fancy  and 
challenging  to  the  imagination.  The  smallest  nub 
of  humanity  in  the  crib  hardly  makes  the  discovery 
of  his  fingers  before  he  begins  to  grasp  and  arrange 
to  his  own  sweet  will  whatever  is  graspable  and  ar- 
rangeable  within  reach;  and  each  child  creeping  to 
the  window  seat  is  a  new  aspirant  after  the  moon. 
It  is  the  most  natural  of  continuations  that  the 
youth,  with  each  new  craft  made  familiarly  his 
own — the  craft  of  song,  of  colors,  of  words, — 
should  weave  fanciful  snares  for  all  the  intangibles 
by  which  his  faculties  are  surrounded ;  and  it  is  out 
of  this  that  are  born  the  passions  for  painting  and 
poetry  and  acting  out  dramatically  the  passions  of 
others  which  make  of  your  youngster  an  inevitable 
even  if  unskilled  artist.  The  world  is  for  him 
a  veritable  palace  of  suggestion,  with  a  spell  for  the 
opening  of  each  magic  portal,  half  the  mystery  of 
which  consists  in  its  independent  finding.  One 
might  indeed  say  that  the  passion  for  expression 
and  for  rhythmic  form  finds  its  full  complement  in 


122  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  gorgeously  varied  suggestiveness  of  all  that  the 
eye  sees  and  the  mind  construes;  the  union  of  the 
two,  sense  and  motion,  rhythm  and  imitation,  is 
the  thing  we  call  art. 

Partly  what  I  wish  to  indicate  is  that  art  is  not  a 
thing  apart  from  life,  but  that  it  is  a  part  of  life, 
and  most  of  all  a  part  of  the  young  and  growing 
life  of  the  school  child.  There  used  to  be  the  no- 
tion that  music  and  painting  and  polite  letters  were 
all  in  the  nature  of  "accomplishments,"  suitable  for 
young  ladies  with  matrimonial  aspirations  and  for 
young  gentlemen  of  drawing-room  habits.  Now 
neither  the  aspiration  nor  the  habits  are  incompat- 
ible with  a  cultivated  sense  of  beauty,  and  undoubt- 
edly there  is  this  truth  in  the  old  view,  that  the  culti- 
vated appreciation  enhances  social  qualities.  But 
what  is  important  for  teachers  to  understand,  and 
for  the  world  with  them,  is  the  fact  that  the  love  of 
beauty  and  its  expression  in  art  is  something  that  is 
deep  and  instinctive  and  humanly  indispensable  in 
man's  nature;  and  again  that  (this  being  true)  it  is 
part  of  the  school's  task  to  summon  forth  the  love 
and  to  indicate  the  means  of  expression. 

And  what  are  these  means,  as  the  schools  and 
teachers  possess  them?  I  should  answer,  poetry 
and  pageantry.  And  in  this  answer  I  should  mean 
by  poetry,  not  merely  formal  verse,  but,  in  the 
Greek  sense,  the  whole  art  of  aesthetic  creation ;  the 
poet  is  literally  a  "maker,"  and  poetry,  therefore, 
should  represent  the  inventive  or  expressive  side  of 


POETRY  AND  PAGEANTRY  123 

the  love  of  beauty,  leading  to  manifestation  in  all 
forms  of  music  and  acting  and  imaginative  recount- 
ing, and  the  whole  round  of  artistic  forms.  By- 
pageantry,  again,  I  should  mean  what  the  word  first 
stands  for,  and  that  is  the  aesthetic  structure,  the 
scene,  which  is  given  by  nature  and  by  the  world  and 
by  all  the  great  abode  of  the  human  mind,  historical 
and  cosmical.  The  universe  is  the  vastest  and  most 
magnificent  of  all  pageants,  wherein,  as  Longinus 
says,  we  are  entered,  to  be  not  only  spectators  of 
her  contests,  but  ourselves  most  ardent  competitors 
and  ourselves  candidates  for  the  prize  —  those 
crowns  of  laurel  which  are  the  poet's  one  reward. 
I  am  but  repeating  in  more  ranging  terms  the  com- 
plementation of  rhythm  and  imitation,  which  now 
should  be  seen  to  be  not  only  instincts  deep  in  our 
nature,  but  veritable  laws  of  life  and  of  the  whole 
universe  within  which  we  dwell. 

Quite  literally,  too,  poetry  and  pageantry  are  the 
natural  modes  of  the  school's  expression  of  its  un- 
derstanding of  beauty.  Poetry  in  its  literary  forms 
comes  naturally  as  a  theme  for  study,  and  again  it 
should  come  in  the  library,  through  a  liberal  supply 
of  the  great  poetic  books.  It  comes  likewise  in  song 
and  in  the  forms  of  music,  for  never  has  poetry 
been  merely  a  literary  form,  but  always  also  a  musi- 
cal form.  Music  and  singing,  as  everyone  knows, 
belong  by  right  to  school  years  and  to  all  years. 
Pageantry,  also,  comes  in  a  variety  of  forms.  For 
I  suppose  that  it  is  clear  that  the  use  of  a  pencil  and 


124  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

paint,  form  and  color,  is  an  art  of  pageantry 
— the  great  art  of  reproducing  and  preserving 
the  scenic  loveHness  and  the  picturesque  fan- 
tasies which  enrich  our  understanding  of  nature 
and  history  and  indeed  of  the  panoramic  environ- 
ment of  everyday  hfe.  Further  it  is  pageantry 
which  plays  perhaps  the  first  part  in  the  dramatic 
and  festival  features  of  the  school;  for  it  is  the 
spectacle  that  is  the  key  to  our  love  of  stage  and 
masque,  and  gives  to  splendid  mummeries  an 
undying  fascination.  Youth  is  ever  on  the  alert  for 
these  things,  ready,  with  every  zest,  to  bring  them 
to  realization  whenever  the  chance  is  given.  All 
that  is  needed  is  the  suggestion, — a  magic  wand 
which  should  be  in  every  teacher's  hand. 

I  do  not  think  I  need  undertake  practical  hints; 
the  whole  matter  of  art  and  pageantry  is  nowadays 
a  recognized  feature  of  school  organization.  But 
I  should  like  to  indicate  what  seems  to  me  a  peril 
of  the  practice, — and  this,  again,  is  the  peril  of  reg- 
imentation. I  believe  in  instruction  in  the  technique 
of  the  arts — this  of  course;  and  I  know  that  expert- 
ness  in  them  comes  only  from  work.  Nevertheless, 
I  am  not  convinced  that  training  in  art  ought  to 
stand  in  the  curriculum  on  the  same  footing  as  other 
branches.  It  ought  to  stand  as  a  special  opportu- 
nity, rather  than  as  a  requirement,  to  be  pursued 
spontaneously  and  out  of  love  of  it.  For  this  rea- 
son I  should  make  it  extra-curricular,  and  give  op- 
portunity for  its  cultivation  in  irregular  hours,  and 


POETRY  AND  PAGEANTRY  125 

whenever  the  interest  is  keen.  I  believe  that  pro- 
ficiency in  the  expression  of  beauty,  Hke  the  under- 
standing and  desire  of  beauty,  comes  less  by  routine 
than  by  intense  devotion;  and  that  the  moments  of 
intensity  must  be  seized  upon.  Of  course  I  also  be- 
lieve in  offering  every  encouragement  which  re- 
sources permit  for  the  development  of  taste  and  the 
manifestation  of  artistic  powers.  It  is  mainly  for 
this  reason  that — as  I  said  once  before — had  I  the 
making  of  the  calendar,  it  would  be  full  of  red-let- 
ter days,  days  of  festival  in  which  the  children  and 
youths  should  be  the  fete-makers,  the  artists.  For 
this  same  reason  (as  also  for  its  value  in  giving  an 
understanding  love  of  home  and  country),  I  should 
encourage  the  pageant  based  upon  national  history 
or  local  life,  in  which  the  nobility  of  American  char- 
acter or  the  beauties  of  our  native  traditions 
should  be  brought  home  to  young  and  old  alike. 
For,  after  all,  it  is  not  merely  the  young  that  par- 
take of  the  richness  of  life  in  giving  expression  to 
whatever  is  lovely,  it  is  also  their  elders,  in  whom 
the  imagination  is  a  bit  staled  by  care  and  disap- 
pointment, who  are  to  be  won  back  into  the  first  and 
freshest  of  inspirations,  the  love  of  beauty,  which  is 
also  surely  the  last  and  divinest  of  inspirations. 


LETTER  XIII 

THE  AGE  OF  ROMANCE 

THE  grace,  imagination,  and  generosities  of 
childhood  and  youth  form  such  a  treasure,  in 
the  whole  economy  of  human  life,  as  deserves  not 
only  the  sympathy  of  those  who  have  passed  the 
golden  age,  but  their  most  ardent  appreciation — 
for  it  is  from  the  sun  of  youth,  shedding  its  chang- 
ing but  endless  glories  upon  the  days  of  mankind, 
that  the  workaday  and  sunset  years  derive  their  own 
most  precious  illumination.  I  am  here  returning 
to  a  former  theme — the  enrichment  of  life  which 
the  presence  of  youth  gives  to  all — for  I  am  con- 
vinced that  it  is  from  this  point  of  view  alone  that 
the  schools,  as  the  especial  provision  which  society 
makes  for  its  youth,  will  be  accorded  their  true  dig- 
nity as  institutions  of  the  state.  And  of  all  the 
problems  which  beset  the  teacher,  none,  I  conceive, 
is  more  difficult,  nor  should  be  the  cause  of  more 
self-searching  criticism,  than  is  that  which  has  to  do 
with  the  teacher's  attitude  toward  those  enthusiasms 
for  things  of  the  imagination  which  the  practical 
years  of  maturity  look  back  upon  as  dreaming,  but 
which,  in  the  order  of  nature,  are  God-given  to 
youth. 

127 


128  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

There  is,  in  all  human  handiwork,  whether  it  be 
wrought  in  the  fragile  form  of  the  arts  or  in  the 
brick  and  iron  and  brown  earth  of  the  industries,  a 
character  of  phantasmagoria.  To  the  worker,  of 
the  middle  years  of  life,  the  product  of  his  toil  looks 
hard,  matter-of-fact  and  seems  building  for  the  ages. 
But  to  the  old  man,  whose  hands  rest  after  his  years 
of  labor,  and  to  the  young,  whose  mind  is  vivid  with 
the  lines  and  colors  of  what  is  yet  to  be  builded,  the 
material  world  is  all  of  the  stuff  of  dreams,  and  man's 
most  stable  cities  are  but  as  lodges  erected  for  their 
passing  season,  as  camps  set  up  for  the  night.  And 
it  is  more  for  this  than  for  any  other  reason  that 
these  two,  the  young  and  the  old,  are  drawn  to  a 
common  understanding.  They  live  in  a  visionary 
universe,  wherein  man's  part  is  to  adventure,  to  dis- 
cover, to  snare  the  evanescent  charms,  and  as  best  he 
may  to  make  a  brave  show  of  his  captures  against 
that  swift-come  day  when  all  shall  be  wiped  clean, 
and  the  earth  renewed  for  a  new  race ;  for  it  is  not 
what  man  leaves,  but  what  he  lives  that  makes  life's 
wealth. 

The  young  and  the  old  see  this,  one  by  a  morn- 
ing, the  other  by  an  evening  sun ;  but  we  of  the  mid- 
dle years  are  ready  at  forgetting  it,  absorbed  as  we 
are  in  what  we  a  bit  pompously  call  the  "world's 
work."  Yet  teachers,  at  least,  cannot  afford  such 
a  forgetting.  Theirs  it  is  to  be  the  guides  and  gate- 
keepers betwixt  youth  and  maturity — theirs,  there- 
fore, to  understand  the  ambitions  and  impulses  of 


THE  AGE  OF  ROMANCE  129 

both  periods  of  life.  They  must  forewarn  the 
young  without  disillusioning  them,  for  there  are  few 
spiritual  disasters  so  fell  in  consequence  as  is  the 
thing  we  name  disillusionment, — and  naming,  mis- 
name, since  (as  old  age  knows)  the  most  fatal  of 
illusions  is  to  be  bereft  of  hopeful  imaginings. 
They  must  also  recall  to  the  mature  the  meaning  of 
fancy  in  life's  economy,  keeping  alive  the  creative 
flame  which  is  all  too  easily  snufifed  by  the  routine 
of  toil.  In  brief,  the  teacher  must  comprehend  the 
age  of  romance  not  only  for  the  sake  of  those  young 
folk  in  his  charge  who  are  living  out  its  hey-dey, 
but  also  for  the  sake  of  all  folk — lest  it  be  forgotten 
by  men  that  all  that  is  kingly  in  human  achievement 
gets  its  crowning  glories  from  romantic  fires,  and 
that  of  all  man-built  habitations  the  most  wonderful 
are  castles  in  Spain.  ' 

It  is  for  the  sake  of  their  romance  that  I  believe 
in  keeping  the  fairy  tales  and  the  Halloween  cus- 
toms and  the  Santa  Claus  myth  bright  with  their 
native  fantasy.  Take  Holloween  for  example. 
How  many  realize  out  of  what  antiquity  this  festi- 
val comes  to  us?  For  it  is  assuredly  older  than 
recorded  history  or  than  the  art  of  writing — prob- 
ably by  many  millenia.  Whenever,  in  October,  I 
pass  down  the  street  and  see  in  the  shop  windows 
their  decorations — witches  and  black  cats,  jack-o'- 
lanterns  and  sheaves  of  corn — I  go  back  in  thought 
to  the  great  autumn  harvest  and  all  souls'  festivals 
which  our  ancestors  celebrated  in  the  old  world,  cen- 


130  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

turies  before  Caesar,  centuries  before  King  Cheops 
and  his  pyramid.  Already  in  the  village  communi- 
ties of  that  olden  time  there  was  the  great  feast  of 
the  "harvest  homing,"  when  sheaves  of  corn  were 
brought  in,  the  last  sheaf  tied  like  a  doll,  to  be  the 
"spirit  of  the  corn"  during  the  winter  months. 
The  youths  and  maidens  danced  and  sang,  while  as 
Homer  describes  it,  "a.  lad  with  delicate  voice 
thrummed  the  clear-toned  viol  and  led  the  choric 
chant  in  praise  of  Linos."  Afterwards,  there  were 
bon-fires  (at  least  in  the  Celtic  north),  and  the  bob- 
bing of  apples,  and  the  telling  of  fortunes,  and 
maids  gazed  into  mirroring  waters  to  see  the  images 
of  them  they  are  to  marry.  At  night  food  was  set 
out,  for  the  souls  of  the  dead  returned  then  to  share 
in  the  feast,  and  thus  it  was  the  feast  of  "all  souls," 
of  the  living  and  of  the  dead.  Doubtless  this  is  the 
oldest  of  our  festivals,  and  the  games  and  divinings 
that  go  with  it  the  oldest  that  we  still  follow,  out  of 
the  immemorial  past ;  and  when  the  children  are  out, 
as  Halloween  mummers,  and  the  boys  and  girls 
with  their  games  and  parties,  for  myself  I  am  grate- 
ful that  they  keep,  unconsciously,  this  bit  of  ro- 
mance vital  and  fresh ;  it  is  to  me  a  symbol  of  man's 
true  heritage,  that  life  of  the  spirit  which  outlives 
all  his  material  monuments. 

Christmas  which  falls  just  after  the  change  of 
the  year  at  the  winter  solstice,  and  Easter  which  is 
near  the  spring  equinox  and  in  the  season  of  return- 
ing life,  are  two  great  religious  festivals  which,  by 


THE  AGE  OF  ROMANCE  131 

some  subtlety  of  providence,  fall  also  at  the  time  of 
very  ancient  solar  feasts :  for  both  were  holy  to  our 
pagan  ancestors  before  the  Christian  era.  Perhaps 
it  is  alike  providential  that  our  national  birthday, 
the  Fourth  of  July,  should  fall  so  hard  upon  the 
summer  solstice,  celebrated  with  bale-fires  and 
Druidic  rites  many  centuries  ago.  At  all  events  our 
four  chief  festivals,  Easter,  the  Fourth,  Halloween, 
and  Christmas,  have  a  double  significance ;  being 
not  only  what  directly  we  observe  them  for,  but  also 
memorials  of  the  antiquity  of  our  race,  which,  al- 
ready in  the  dawn  of  time,  was  celebrating  with  the 
seasons  the  vernal  birth  of  life,  its  summer  matu- 
rity, its  autumn  homing,  and  its  winter  quiescence. 
Surely,  there  are  few  things  that  are  essential  to 
human  nature  and  existence  that  are  not  betokened 
by  these  old  fetes,  all  still  dear  to  the  hearts  of 
children. 

Doubtless  it  is  an  easy  task  for  the  schools  to  keep 
such  celebrations  healthy  and  living,  to  broaden  and 
heighten  the  manner  of  their  observance,  and  to  in- 
terpret them  afresh  to  each  generation  of  young- 
sters. This  festal  life  of  the  year  is  the  beginning 
of  the  romantic  interpretation  of  all  life,  in  the  keep- 
ing up  of  venerable  and  picturesque  traditions  as 
well  as  in  the  deeper  meanings  which  attach  to  re- 
ligious and  patriotic  sentiments.  It  may  also  form 
the  beginning  of  a  lively  interest  in  astronomy, 
through  association  with  the  solar  changes  which 
mark  our  seasons  and  show  how  intimately  human 


132  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

fate  and  welfare  is  dependent  upon  the  circling 
heavens — whose  courses,  Plato  tells  us,  are  the 
bright  and  true  image  of  the  courses  of  intelligence 
in  our  own  souls. 

A  more  difficult  task — pertaining  still  to  the  age 
of  romance — is  that  which  has  to  do  with  other  and 
even  m.ore  fundamental  human  dispositions.  For 
the  young  venerate  the  past  less  than  they  live  in 
the  present  and  look  to  the  future :  they  are  the 
great  plotters  of  mankind,  and  their  minds  are  full 
of  forethought.  It  is  this  that  makes  of  them  he- 
roes and  adventurers  and  knights  errant,  eager  to 
explore  all  lands  and  confident  in  the  undertaking 
of  all  deeds.  The  proper  direction  of  this  spirit  of 
adventure,  which  is  the  very  heart  of  romance,  is 
as  important  as  any  part  of  the  task  which  falls  to 
the  teacher;  and  it  should  be,  in  method,  as  remote 
as  any  from  school-room  regimentation.  For  it  is 
here  that  the  quality  of  chivalry,  which  is  the  great 
virtue  of  the  romantic  age,  must  be  awakened  and 
cultivated,  and  this  can  never  be  by  command  but 
only  by  volunteering.  The  courage  and  loyalty  and 
generous  helpfulness  which  are  fhe  prime  traits  of 
chivalry  come  naturally  to,  youth,  once  they  are 
ideally  shown ;  but  in  order  that  they  may  be  made 
living  they  must  have  opportunity  for  exercise — for 
with  all  his  imagination,  your  boy  in  the  'teens  is  a 
hardy  realist,  demanding  space  within  which  to 
move  and  effortful  deeds  to  be  done  in  the  world 
about  him.     Hence,  there  must  be  action  in  his  life. 


THE  AGE  OF  ROMANCE  133 

to  make  it  real,  and  chivalric  action  to  make  real  his 
chivalric  ideals.  And  of  all  our  recent  educational 
innovations  none  seems  to  me  so  promising  as  the  • 
institution  of  the  boy  scouts  and  the  camp-fire  girls. 
For  here  is  supplied  in  just  the  right  mode  that  com- 
bination of  free  opportunity  and  unconstraining  in- 
struction which  will  bring  to  its  natural  flower  the 
knightliness  which  is  in  the  soul  of  every  youth, 
awaiting  only  its  self -disco  very.  Assuredly  no 
school  system  is  complete  without,  not  only  the  lib- 
eral opportunity  for  these  movements,  but  also  the 
positive  provision  for  them  and  encouragement  of 
them.  Soon  (and  it  cannot  be  too  soon)  there  will 
be  no  American  community  in  which  scout  and 
camp-fire  will  not  seem  as  essential  as  the  schools 
themselves ;  nor  any  school  whose  spirit  and  method 
will  not  be  greatly  and  profitably  modified  by  their 
presence.  Their  introduction  will  be  in  a  commu- 
nity which  has  known  them  not,  like  the  throwing 
wide  of  the  windows  to  sunlight  and  free  air. 

The  spirit  of  chivalry,  on  its  adventurous  side, 
wherein  it  calls  for  courage  and  self-sacrifice,  is  un- 
derstood already  in  childhood,  and  may  guide  action 
already  in  childhood.  Nor  can  there  be  any  other 
preparation  of  more  value  for  that  other  phase  of 
chivalric  romance  which  becomes  the  ardent  im- 
pulse of  elder  youth.  It  is  often  and  truly  said  that 
"romantic  love" — meaning  thereby  that  love  whose 
heart  is  all  loyalty  and  devotion — came  into  the 
world  with  mediaeval  chivalry,  that  it  was  unknown 


134  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

to  the  pagans  both  of  the  ancient  Mediterranean  and 
the  ancient  Baltic,  and  existed  only  when  Christian- 
ity had  raised  woman  to  a  position  of  dignity  and 
all  men  to  a  sense  of  spiritual  companionship.     Nor 
can  youth  which  has  been  reared  in  the  chivalric  tra- 
dition, itself  a  thing  too  precious  to  lose,  ever  fail 
of  a  nobler  and  truer  sense  of  the  duties  of  lovers 
as  well  as  of  the  lastingness  of  true  love's  troth, 
when  this  shall  become  the  great  adventure  of  life. 
The  institution  of  marriage,  as  all  men  know,  is  at 
the  foundation  of  the  state;  and  in  the  control  and 
interpretation  of  this  institution,  too,  the  schools, 
whether  willingly  or  not,  must  play  their  leading 
role.     It  is  in  the  school  room  that  youth  and  maid 
first  meet  on  a  social  plane,  and  in  the  school  that 
perhaps  most  of  the  marriage  unions  get  their  first 
impulse.     To  this  there  can  surely  be  no  feeling  of 
objection;  for  to  a  student  of  the  institutions  of 
mankind,  among  the  various  races  of  men,  no  fact 
can  be  more  obvious  than  that  of  all  modes  of 
match-making    humanly    devised     (and    they    are 
many),  none  is  comparable  with  the  free  association 
of  the  young  of  the  two  sexes,  intimate  without  be- 
ing either  prudish  or  familiar,  in  the  public  schools 
of  democratic  states. 

Of  course,  with  such  a  responsibility  theirs,  the 
schools  are  more  than  ever  bound  to  the  cultivation 
— early  and  late  and  assiduous — of  all  ideals  that 
ennoble  human  relations,  most  of  all,  therefore,  to 
the  cultivation  of  those  ideals  of  chivalry  which  are 


THE  AGE  OF  ROMANCE  135 

the  grace  and  illumination  of  romantic  love.  It 
must  be,  then,  the  teacher's  solicitude  that  each  boy 
shall  be  in  his  own  conscience  "chevalier  without 
fear  and  without  stain,"  and  that  each  maid  shall 
read  in  her  mirror  the  love  of  an  inner  as  well  as 
the  quest  of  an  outer  beauty.  The  age  of  aristoc- 
racy is  gone  by;  ours  is  an  age  of  democracy:  but 
the  spirit  of  chivalry  is  a  thing  too  precious  for 
mankind  to  lose,  and  the  schools  must  be  its  pre- 
servers. 


LETTER  XIV 

THE  SCHOOL  SYSTEM 

IN  the  letters  which  hitherto  I  have  written  I  have 
been  concerned  with  the  work  which  the  schools 
have  to  do,  the  education  which  it  should  be  theirs 
to  impart,  and  the  great  task  which  is  set  for  them 
in  the  realization  of  public  welfare.  The  schools 
exist  for  the  sake  of  the  common  weal  of  the  com- 
monwealth, for  the  bettering  of  men's  lives,  and 
should  be  constantly  adapted  and  adapting  them- 
selves to  this  great  purpose.  Of  this,  as  funda- 
mental, we  who  are  teachers  must  never  allow  our- 
selves to  lose  sight :  otherwise  we  fail  in  our  pro- 
fession. 

And  there  is  an  especial  and  insidious  danger  of 
becoming  blinded  to  the  great  end  of  education  to 
which  teachers  more  than  others  are  liable.  This  is 
the  institutionalized  aspect  of  the  public  school,  most 
in  danger  of  misleading  its  own  officials,  who  are  the 
teachers.  Like  every  other  great  public  institution, 
the  public  schools  tend  toward  bureaucratic  organi- 
zation, and  hence  towards  a  system  which  constantly 
threatens  (for  this  is  the  nature  of  bureaucracy)  to 
forget  or  lose  its  purpose  in  the  effort  to  preserve 
its    outward    forms.     Schools  —  grade,    grammar, 

137 


138  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

high,  college, — interlocking  and  superposed  like  a 
vast  and  complex  edifice,  inevitably  stress  and  strain 
their  many  members  into  rigid  and  mechanical 
structures ;  only  the  most  alert  intelligence  can  keep 
this  edifice  from  defeating  its  inner  design,  which 
is,  and  must  ever  be,  the  cultivation  of  mind  and 
character.  Hence  it  is  that  teachers,  and  all  other 
school  officials,  must  be  always  on  their  guard 
against  the  evils  of  ungiving  systematization  in  the 
institution  itself — the  outer  and  evil  counterpart  of 
that  bureaucracy  of  mind  which  we  call  pedantry. 
Let  us,  above  all,  be  not  pedants  of  the  "school 
system!" 

I  say  this  by  way  of  caution,  for  there  is  no  dis- 
position to  evil  to  which  teachers  are  so  peculiarly 
liable  as  in  the  disposition  to  become  slaves  to  their 
"system."  Routine  is  always  easier  than  invention, 
and  in  schools,  where  some  routine  is  imperative, 
the  unslacking  temptation  is  for  the  teacher  to  jog 
on  in  a  deep-rutted  habit.  Of  course  (to  save  our 
dignities)  we  like  to  call  the  habit-making  process 
"administrative  work" — but  this  is  self -camouflage; 
most  of  what  goes  as  school  administration,  from 
the  university  down,  is  nothing  more  than  clerk's 
slavery;  it  all  goes  in  the  direction  of  regulation, 
and  that  means  straight  toward  the  tomb  of  what 
is  vital  and  promising  in  the  great  task  of  bringing 
forth  conscious  life.  There  is  an  anecdote  (which 
I  trust  is  not  true)  of  a  certain  superintendent  of 
schools  to  the  effect  that  he  boasted  that  if  given 


THE  SCHOOL  SYSTEM  139 

the  grade  to  which  a  child  in  his  schools  belonged 
he  could  tell  at  any  hour  of  the  school  day 
what  pages  of  what  book  were  open  before  it.  This 
seems  to  me'  horrible  and  monstrous.  It  is  the 
goose-step  of  the  mental  drill,  and  in  its  consequence 
can  only  be  even  more  ruinous  than  is  its  military 
model.  I  cannot  believe  this  tale  to  be  true,  but  its 
mere  currency  in  the  community  shows  the  exist- 
ence of  the  ideal.  Men  flatter  themselves  by  call- 
ing it  educational  "efficiency,"  whereas  it  is  in  truth 
neither  educational  nor  efficient,  but  only  the  dismal 
clanking  of  fetters.  Teachers  know  (how  many 
of  them  have  not  cried  out  against  it)  that  they  are 
ever  repeatedly  being  hobbled  in  coils  of  red  tape — 
official  in  many  cases,  but  also  often  self-imposed, 
— magnified  under  the  name  of  system ;  but  teachers 
know  also  that  a  slothful  yielding  to  this  is,  for 
weak  mortals,  vastly  easier  than  the  preservation 
of  that  true  energy  of  instruction  which  comes  only 
from  the  life  of  ideas.  In  the  last  resort  as  in  the 
first,  the  work  of  teaching  is  a  work  of  the  mind 
bent  upon  discovery. 

System  in  public  schools  is  necessary  (this  goes 
without  saying),  but  there  is  nothing  sacrosanct 
about  its  forms  (and  this  needs  saying).  For  ex- 
ample, there  is  a  reflection  of  nature  in  the  hier- 
archy of  our  school  "grades," — primary,  intermedi- 
ate, grammar,  high,  college,  graduate — formidable 
enough  when  set  out  in  order !  And  the  nature  which 
is  reflected  is  the  nature  of  the  growing  minds  and 


140  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

bodies  of  children;  that  is  the  fact  which  gives  its 
whole  meaning  to  such  a  system.  The  grades  are, 
so  to  speak,  coefficients  or  functions  of  these  minds 
and  bodies,  varied  by  rather  than  varying  the  nat- 
ural development  of  intelligence  and  desire.  If  I 
may  change  my  figure,  the  school  system  should  be 
conceived,  not  as  a  mold  into  which  plastic  human 
material  is  to  be  poured  and  rigidly  cast,  but  as  like 
the  many-chambered  shell  of  the  nautilus,  of  which 
each  apartment  is  the  creation  of  the  growing  life 
of  the  voyager,  captain  of  the  craft. 

Probably  the  very  worst  feature  of  our  systema- 
tizing tendency  is  the  reduction  of  educational 
"standards"  to  a  kind  of  deadly  arithmetic.  What 
I  refer  to  is  the  use  of  percentage  gradings  as  tests 
of  advancement,  the  equation  of  subjects  in  the 
form  of  number-hour  courses  and  credits,  and  the 
giving  of  diplomas  and  certificates  on  the  basis  of 
purely  numerical  records.  Certainly  I  understand 
that  something  of  this  is  necessary;  but,  at  all  events 
in  the  higher  grades,  the  method  has  reached  the 
level  of  the  grotesque.  University  students  go 
about  seeking  "credit  hours,"  when  they  should  be 
interested  in  learning;  they  forget  that  what  is  of 
value  to  them  must  be  an  education,  and  they  rush 
pell-mell  after  the  degree.  Too  rapidly  this  same 
method  (with  its  ruin  of  ideals)  is  pressing  down- 
ward ;  already  it  has  seized  upon  the  high  school, 
and.  if  my  information  is  not  at  fault,  is  even  now 
invading  the  grades.     Clearly  arithmetization  is  a 


THE  SCHOOL  SYSTEM  141 

menace,    and   the    sooner   teachers    set   themselves 
against  its  encroachments  the  safer  will  be  the  fu- 
ture of  real  learning  and  the  truer  the  fundamental 
patriotism  of  the  schools.     Americans  rightly  pro- 
claim as  a  national  characteristic  the  spirit  of  in- 
dividual  independence    and   individual   initiative — 
the  power  of  a  man  to  look  out  for  himself ;  but  as-' 
suredly  there  is  no  better  method  for  destroying  this 
spirit  and  its  powers  than  an  educational  system  de- 
prived of  inner  life  and  reduced  to  an  outer  num- 
bering.    When  the  final  meaning  of  going  to  school 
is  a  mathematical  computation,  plus  a  badge,  who 
will  prize  its  gifts  or  what  state  will  profit  by  them? 
Along  with  the  evil  of  exaggerated  numberings 
goes  servility  to  texts  and  methods.     Both  of  these 
evils — the  text-book  and  the  method — grow  with 
the   size   and   solidity   of   the   school   organization. 
Again  I  would  say  that  I  do  not  wish  to  refuse 
merit  or  necessity  to  that  from  which  the  evil  use  is 
prone  to  come;  I  sh-ould  not  reject  text-books  nor 
do  away  with  methods  of  teaching.     These  things 
are  not  themselves  bad.     What  is  bad  about  them  is 
their  misuse,  and  that  comes  by  way  of  imperatives 
and    regulations.     Take    the    text-book.     In    some 
states  there  is  by  law  state-wide  use  of  the  same 
book  or  series  of  books  in  all  the  schools  of  the  state 
— an  intolerable  opportunity  for  graft,  as  well  as  a 
denial  of  all  rights  of  independent  judgment  on  the 
part  of  the  teacher.     It  stands  to  reason — and  it  is 
the  fact, — that  the  utilitv  of  a  text-book  varies  with 


142  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  person  who  uses  it,  and  that  for  persons  of  dif- 
fering powers  differing  books  are  often  to  be  pre- 
ferred. The  real  guard  against  misuse  of  such 
means  is  the  teacher  who  can  teach  without  any 
text-book,  and  who  never  regards  the  book  in  any 
other  hght  than  as  a  secondary  help  in  the  task  of 
teaching.  Indeed,  of  what  consequence  is  the 
teacher  if  he  have  not  the  gift  of  imparting  knowl- 
edge from  his  own  possession  of  it?  Which  must 
also  be  by  his  own  best  self-discovered  methods.  I 
remember,  twenty  years  ago,  how  students  in 
teachers'  colleges  used  to  be  canting  the  phrase 
"apperception  mass"  (brought  with  not  a  few  other 
pedagogic  evils  out  of  Germany),  thinking  that  it 
was  a  kind  of  open  sesame  to  a  mode  of  teaching 
without  labor  and  of  learning  without  conscious- 
ness. Today,  "socialization,"  "motivization,"  and 
I  know  not  what  other  polysyllables,  are  twisted  ofif 
the  pedagogic  tongue  with  the  same  old  facility. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  most  of  this  is  just  showy  jar- 
gon. All  such  methods  resolve  in  plain  English  to 
the  one  and  only  true  method  of  teaching,  and  that 
is  to  find  an  interested  teacher  able  to  interest  a 
pupil :  interest  means  willing  work,  work  means  un- 
derstanding, and  understanding  means  the  advance- 
ment of  that  learning  which  is  precious  in  life.  An 
honest  school  official,  discovering  an  honest  teacher, 
will  drop  pedantic  apparatus  and,  with  easy  con- 
science, bid  him  go  to  his  task — the  true  way  of 
which  it  is  for  the  teacher  to  find. 


THE  SCHOOL  SYSTEM  143 

But  I  have  still  a  third  bone  to  pick  with  the  sys- 
tem-makers, and  this  is  their  substitution  of  the 
"accrediting"  for  the  "examination"  method  of  ad- 
vancing students.  This  grew  not  unnaturally  out 
of  the  point-credit  system;  for  where  the  subjects 
studied  vary  in  many  directions,  it  is  obviously  dif- 
ficult to  agree  upon  the  matter  of  examinations, 
while  it  is  relatively  easy  to  make  clerical  computa- 
tions of  number-records.  But  because  it  was  easy 
of  growth  is  no  reason  why  the  method  is  beneficial 
in  operation;  and  in  my  opinion  it  is  distinctly  the 
reverse. 

It  is  not  that  I  wish  to  hold  an  unqualified  brief 
for  the  examination.  For  a  teacher  whose  pupils 
are  constantly  under  eye,  with  day  to  day  contact, 
they  need  not  be  necessary.  Of  course,  where  the 
classes  are  very  large,  examinations  cannot  be  dis- 
pensed with,  and  probably  even  for  the  small  class 
there  is  a  certain  invigorating  bracing-up  as  a  result 
of  the  test.  But  it  is  not  of  examinations  within 
the  class  room  that  I  am  thinking;  these  are  a  fea- 
ture of  method,  and  should  be  the  teacher's  own  af- 
fair. Very  different  is  the  case  with  "entrance  ex- 
aminations." In  passing  from  one  school  or  from 
one  teacher  to  another,  the  surest  mode  of  getting 
acquainted  is  the  examination  which  shows  both 
parties — teacher  and  pupil — what  is  to  be  expected 
of  one  another.  No  one  with  long  experience 
in  teaching  can  doubt  that  time  and  effort  are  both 
constantly  thrown  to  the  winds  as  a  result  of  the 


144  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

wrong  placing  of  students,  growing  out  of  the  ac- 
crediting method.  This  is  naturally  most  an  evil 
in  the  university,  and  in  particular  in  the  relation 
of  the  university  to  the  "accredited"  high  schools. 
Instead  of  bringing  these  schools  into  touch  with 
the  university  the  accrediting  system  puts  them  out 
of  touch  with  what  is  real  and  vigorous  in  college 
ideals — and  that  is  the  body  of  learning  which  the 
college  aims  to  impart  and  which  the  entrance  ex- 
amination served  (even  if  feebly)  to  define. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  examinations  (in  many 
ways  crude  devices)  are  panaceas  for  the  ills  which 
beset  system.  But  they  do  have  this  merit :  that 
they  focus  attention  upon  matter  and  not  upon  man- 
ner, upon  inner  attainment  and  not  upon  outer 
credits — they  stand  for  the  same  kind  of  difference 
as  that  between  character  and  reputation.  And  in 
doing  this  they  point  the  way  to  the  kind  of  medi- 
cine or  sanitation  which  should  immunize  the  school 
system  from  its  own  dangers  and  lead  to  the  pres- 
ervation of  educational  health.  This  is  the  con- 
stant interchange  of  ideas  and  points  of  view  as  be- 
tween teachers,  among  themselves,  and  between 
teachers  and  pupils  through  variety  of  relation.  It 
is  again  the  old  problem  of  securing  human  con- 
tact, individual  with  individual,  mind  with  mind, 
as  the  real  foundation  of  the  birth  and  life  of  the 
humane  spirit.  As  to  how  this  can  be  brought 
about,  I  can  at  least  make  a  suggestion. 

My   suggestion   is  of   this  nature.     Among  col- 


THE  SCHOOL  SYSTEM  ^     145 

leges  there  is  rapidly  growing  in  favor  what  is 
called  the  exchange  professorship.  This  means 
that  for  a  term  or  a  year  a  teacher  changes  places 
with  a  colleague  in  some  other  institution.  Each 
of  the  exchanging  professors  meets  new  profes- 
sional associates  and  a  new  style  of  student,  while 
the  students  are  given  the  benefit  of  a  fresh  point 
of  view  in  the  familiar  subject.  Such  exchanges 
are  made  not  merely  as  between  the  institutions  of 
our  several  states,  but,  between  teachers  from  for- 
eign countries — Frenchmen,  Spaniards,  Japanese, 
lecturing  in  the  United  States  and  American  pro- 
fessors lecturing  in  the  schools  of  these  countries. 
Such  a  system  has  its  counterpart  in  the  rotation  of 
teachers  in  the  grades,  in  teaching  by  substitute 
teachers,  and  from  another  angle  in  the  lesser  per- 
manency with  which  secondary  school  teachers  are 
employed,  all  good  in  so  far  as  these  produce  va- 
riety of  personal  contact.  Professional  imperma- 
nency  is  not  in  itself  good,  of  course;  but  is  there 
any  reason  why  the  university  method  of  ex- 
change teaching  should  not  be  carried  down  into  the 
schools  below,  once  the  teacher  comes  to  his  own  in 
his  career? 

Possibly  a  simpler  step  toward  the  same  sound 
end  would  be  the  adoption  of  the  English  plan  of 
"visiting  examiners,"  according  to  which  examina- 
tions that  mark  important  transitions  in  the  school 
course  (what  we  call  graduations)  are  given  by 
teachers  brought  from  neighboring  schools  for  the 


146  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

purpose.  Inevitably  a  teacher  who  knows  that 
those  whom  he  is  training  are  to  be  tried  out  by  a 
colleague  having  different  methods  of  teaching  feels 
a  certain  healthy  toning  up  of  his  own  work;  he  is 
kept  upon  his  mettle,  and  thinks  of  his  teaching  not 
in  terms  of  the  judgment  rendered  by  students 
knowing  nothing  of  his  subject  except  what  he 
gives,  but  in  terms  of  the  mature  judgment  of  a 
fellow  teacher.  Certainly  such  a  plan  would  be  of 
vast  benefit  to  our  universities,  and  if  carried  down 
into  high  school  grades  it  would  eventually  out- 
value every  device  of  official  inspection. 

The  reason  is  simple.  Teaching  is  a  personal 
art,  not  a  matter  of  apparatus,  method,  system,  ma- 
chinery. It  thrives  where  the  teachers  have  liv- 
ing responsibilities  and  are  aware  of  their  respon- 
sibilities, alike  to  their  pupils  and  to  the  great  in- 
heritance of  human  civilization,  which  it  is  theirs 
to  guard  through  its  untarnished  transmission  to 
posterity. 


LETTER  XV 

THE  TEACHER'S  PROFESSION 

TEACHING  is  one  of  the  oldest  of  the  profes- 
sions. It  has  a  record  of  eminence  in  the 
names  of  those  who  have  followed  it — philos- 
ophers, scholars,  scientists,  men  of  affairs — second 
to  no  other  calling.  It  has  a  present  and  future 
importance  for  society,  in  the  preservation  and  devel- 
opment of  the  state,  second  to  none.  It  demands 
in  aptitude  and  in  the  generous  quality  of  human 
wisdom  a  high  endowment,  and  in  preparation  (at 
the  standard)  an  arduous  and  exacting  training. 
With  such  a  history  and  position,  the  profession  of 
teaching  should  be  one  of  the  most  honorable  of 
professional  employments.  It  is,  judged  by  com- 
mon repute,  one  of  the  least  honorable.  As  all  men 
know,  the  teacher  (college  professor  or  district 
schoolmistress)  is  everywhere  regarded  as  a  legiti- 
mate subject  of  a  kind  of  public  patronizing — as  if 
teachers  were  necessarily  marked  by  a  certain  child- 
ishness of  mind,  because  of  their  preoccupation 
with  the  young.  Such  a  point  of  view  must  have 
its  causes,  which  are  certainly  of  importance  for 
those  who  are  in  the  profession  to  understand — 
not  merely  with  a  view  to  bettering  their  own  repu- 

147 


148  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

tation,  but  with  a  view  to  overcoming  whatever  de- 
fects in  the  character  of  their  profession  may  jus- 
tify the  reputation. 

For,  frankly,  teachers  everywhere  know  that 
there  is  some  justification  for  the  pubHc  attitude — 
understanding  by  "justification"  an  honest  and  in- 
telligent human  motive.  This  begins  and  ends  in 
the  fact  that  the  attitude  is  in  so  considerable  a 
measure  shared  by  teachers  themselves.  The  pub- 
lic but  takes  them  at  their  own  self-appraisement. 
There  is  no  human  trait  quite  so  impossible  to  con- 
ceal as  is  one's  estimate  of  oneself;  your  conceited 
man  proclaims  his  quality  as  upon  a  placard,  and 
the  broken  in  spirit  is  never  to  be  mistaken.  It  is, 
too,  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  (ask  for  a 
job  and  you  will  discover  it)  to  judge  another  at 
his  own  valuation,  which  means  that  it  is  at  least 
well  to  have  such  good  conceit  as  knowledge  of 
one's  powers  warrants.  And  this  is  just  what  the 
teaching  profession  lacks;  it  is  humble  and  spirit- 
less in  its  own  self-esteem,  and  is  taken  in  a  like 
mode  by  the  public.  The  first  great  reform  needed 
among  teachers  is  conviction  of  the  importance  and 
pride  in  the  accomplishment  of  their  work. 

Of  course  there  are  objective  reasons  for  this 
subjective  defect.  Everybody  is  familiar  with 
them ;  educational  discussions  always  return  to 
them.  1  refer  to  the  forms  of  preparation  for  and 
the  manner  of  recruiting  the  profession ;  to  the 
questions  of  salary,  pension,  tenure;  to  the  problem 


THE  TEACHER'S  PROFESSION  149 

of  "feminization,"  which  is  serious  primarily  be- 
cause it  tends  to  make  teaching  a  temporary  chore 
rather  than  a  Hfe  work;  to  the  diffuse  organization 
and  lack  of  professional  spirit  of  teachers,  as  com- 
pared with  men  in  other  employments.  Each  of 
these  factors  is  in  the  nature  of  a  real  social  prob- 
lem, and  each  tends  to  weaken  the  power  and  de- 
teriorate the  work  of  teaching,  while  all  of  them 
together  are  contributory  to  the  one  great  funda- 
mental defect — the  weak  professional  self-respect 
of  teachers.  Once  this  is  reformed,  the  public 
standing  of  school  employes  will  right  itself. 

But  undoubtedly  the  reform  of  spirit  must  follow 
upon  some  program  for  the  solution  of  the  besetting 
problems.  I  do  not  think  it  necessary  that  the  so- 
lutions be  fully  reached  in  order  that  the  profession 
be  born  into  a  new  and  healthier  consciousness; 
there  need  be  but  their  clear  formulation  (perhaps 
in  the  shape  of  a  platform,  such  as  politicians  em- 
ploy) ;  this,  of  itself,  would  tend  to  create  spirit. 
And  it  is  of  the  possibility  of  such  a  teachers'  plat- 
form, conceived  in  the  broadest  way,  that  I  would 
speak. 

Its  prime  article  should  surely  be  a  clear  expres- 
sion of  the  teacher's  conception  of  the  meaning  of 
education  in  society.  There  should  be  a  statement 
of  the  place  of  liberal  training  in  the  whole  educa- 
tional life  of  the  state;  of  the  place  and  justification 
of  vocational  training,  and  especially  of  its  relation- 
ship to  the  great  labor  problems  that  are  shaking 


150  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  world;  of  the  relation  and  meaning  of  "second- 
ary" and  "higher"  education,  and  of  the  modes  in 
which  a  democratical  government  should  select  can- 
didates for  the  latter.  On  these  matters  I  have  al- 
ready expressed  or  implied  my  own  views;  but  I  be- 
lieve that  a  formal  enouncement,  say  from  Ne- 
braska teachers  as  a  body,  and  from  American 
teachers  as  a  body,  and  again  from  the  teaching 
profession  of  all  the  allied  democracies,  represented 
in  a  great  congress — that  such  an  enouncement  would 
be  of  the  greatest  weight  in  the  public  mind  and  of 
the  highest  significance  to  teachers  themselves.  We 
all  believe  that  the  world  is  on  the  eve  of  a  vital 
reconstruction,  affecting  the  whole  ideal  of  life; 
and  we  should  realize  that  this  reconstruction  makes 
not  only  an  unexampled  demand  upon  the  teachers 
of  men,  but  that  it  offers  the  teaching  profession 
such  an  opportunity  for  habilitation  as  it  has  never 
yet  seen.  In  the  generation  that  is  to  create  the 
new  life  the  teachers  should  be  leaders. 

But  first  w^e  must  clear  away  the  dust  of  the  past. 
And  I  should  follow%  in  my  platform,  the  enounce- 
ment of  principles  by  specific  "planks"  dealing  with 
the  venerable  ills  which  beset  us.  Among  these  (to 
take  the  problems  in  the  order  in  which  I  cited  them 
above),  there  would  be  first  a  plank  calling  for  a 
state-wide  consideration  of  the  qualifications  to  be 
demanded  of  teachers  and  of  the  modes  of  their 
certification  already  in  the  statute  books,  for  it  is 
surely  time  that  the  whole  matter  be  overhauled. 


THE  TEACHER'S  PROFESSION  151 

There  is  red  tape  to  be  raveled  out,  and  common 
sense  to  be  injected  in,  and  a  kind  of  general 
rule  to  be  held  before  all  eyes  to  the  effect  that 
if  it  be  not  strictly  true  that  "teachers  are  born  and 
not  made,"  it  is  at  least  true  that  they  must  be  born 
with  proper  endowment  before  they  can  be  made 
with  proper  finish. 

The  questions  of  salary,  tenure,  pay,  are  inti- 
mately related  to  the  others — indeed,  are  rather  de- 
pendent upon  other  reforms  than  determinants  of 
them.  Mere  salary  or  wage  increases  are  of  little 
moment  unless  they  be  accompanied  by  such  a  ton- 
ing-up  of  professional  standards  and  such  a  growth 
of  professional  spirit  as  will  justify  them.  Finan- 
cial returns  are,  after  all,  in  a  broad  way  reflective 
of  social  valuations;  teachers  must  raise  the  valua- 
tion first.  However,  for  the  plank's  sake,  there 
should  be  an  effort  to  name  a  fair  scale,  in  all  the 
branches  of  the  teaching  service. 

The  problem  of  feminization  is  really  only  a  spe- 
cial phase  of  the  problem  of  temporary  tenure, 
which  is,  I  suspect,  more  than  any  other  one  thing 
at  the  root  of  the  discomforts  that  professionally 
beset  teachers.  For  out  of  this  temporary  tenure 
grow  a  number  of  evils.  There  is,  first,  the  fact 
that  the  teacher  is  not  an  organic  member  of  the 
community  which  he  serves.  He  is  a  passing  citi- 
zen, a  missionary  at  best,  a  tramp  at  worst.  This 
is  the  height  of  absurdity,  for  there  is  no  profession 
where  the  demand  for  a  long  and  intimate  service 


152  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

is  more  real.  We  look  upon  the  "family  physician" 
as  an  institution;  for  the  reason  that  the  good  doc- 
tor must  know  not  only  the  symptoms  of  disease, 
but  the  habits  of  health  and  the  bodily  constitutions 
of  his  patients.  How  much  more  should  this  be 
the  case  with  the  physician  of  the  mind — slowest  of 
all  human  functions  in  developing  and  hardest  of 
all  to  measure  and  diagnose?  Moreover,  if  the 
teacher  be  in  the  community  what  ideally  he  should 
be,  a  leader  in  its  whole  intellectual  life,  he  can  be- 
come this  only  through  a  long  familiarity  with  it 
and  with  its  needs,  and  that  means  only  through 
becoming  a  part  of  it.  The  ideal  schoolmaster  is 
the  man  who  knows  the  youth  from  infancy  up- 
ward, who  knows  the  parents,  who  knows  the  na- 
ture and  impulses  which  in  each  community  give  in- 
dividuality and  color  to  the  local  society.  Such  a 
man  or  woman  must  pass  a  lifetime  with  a  school. 
Another  defect  of  passing  tenure  is  that  it  tends  to 
over-emphasize  the  superintendence,  the  system 
side,  of  school  conduct.  When  teachers  become 
differentiated  into  groups,  the  one  composed  en- 
tirely of  the  long-tried  and  the  other  of  the  tem- 
porary "job  holders,"  it  becomes  impossible  to 
avoid  bureaucracy;  the  first-named  group  will  inev- 
itably control  and  prescribe  for  the  second,  taking 
away  the  whole  spirit  of  independence  and  all  incen- 
tive to  invention — in  other  words,  rooting  "Ameri- 
canism" from  out  the  craft.  This,  it  can  be  imag- 
ined, is  but  a  poor  preparation  for  the  preservation 
of  our  national  spirit. 


THE  TEACHER'S  PROFESSION  153 

Now  to  deal  with  these  evils,  I  should  favor  a 
plank,  or  series  of  them,  something  in  this  order. 
First,  a  formal  organization  of  teachers,  not  in  loose 
associations,  but  in  self-discriminating  societies, 
having  requirements  and  grades;  as,  for  example, 
there  should  be  at  least  a  grade  of  master  teachers 
and  a  grade  of  apprentice  teachers,  with  differing 
professional  privileges  attaching  to  each  one.  The 
idea  would  be  to  distinguish  those  who  are  making 
a  life  work  of  teaching  from  those  who  undertake 
it  experimentally;  for  surely  it  is  the  former  who 
should  set  the  standard  of  the  profession.  Second 
— feminism  again — there  should  be  a  plank  encour- 
aging the  employment  of  married  women,  not  as 
against  those  who  are  professional,  but  as  against 
those  who  are  obviously  but  candidates  for  marriage 
(in  itself  a  legitimate  and  respectable  social  condi- 
tion, but  not  conducive  to  the  advancement  of 
teaching).  Third,  there  should  be  a  call  for  the 
more  public  recognition  of  the  teacher  in  the  com- 
munity which  he  serves,  both  through  a  legal  im- 
provement of  his  position  (school-board  fiat  is  not 
necessarily  the  best  or  sole  ground  for  employment ; 
there  might  be  a  county  superintendent's  ratifica- 
tion or  veto  of  local  action,  with  a  possible  referen- 
dum to  the  community)  ;  and  again  through  local 
or  state- fund  salary  guarantees  as  a  reward  for  long 
service. 

But  all  such  planks  and  the  whole  of  such  a  plat- 
form would  have  to  do  with  external  changes  which 


154  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

could  be  of  little  significance  if  unaccompanied  by 
internal  revelation.  What  it  all  comes  to  is  this: 
the  teacher  must  find  in  his  work  itself  such  an  in- 
terest and  such  a  field  for  achievement  that  he  will 
be  ever  upon  his  mettle  to  realize  its  possibilities. 
There  must  be  more  independence  and  less  superin- 
tendence ;  more  invention  and  less  convention ;  more 
imagination  and  less  habit.  The  plank  toward  a 
division  of  teachers  into  masters  and  apprentices 
would  look  toward  this;  for  at  present  the  great 
body  of  teachers  in  the  public  schools  are  all  treated 
as  apprentices,  and  few,  even  of  the  long-expe- 
rienced, are  given  master  work  to  do.  The  plank 
leading  toward  permanency  of  tenure  should  look 
in  the  same  direction.  For  if  a  person  of  imagina- 
tion and  trained  observation,  such  as  a  teacher 
should  be,  were  to  be  placed  in  any  American  com- 
munity with  a  life  work  there  in  view,  it  would  be- 
come not  only  his  duty,  but  the  fascination  of  a 
lifetime,  to  come  to  such  an  understanding  of  that 
community  as  should  reveal  in  it  an  image  of  all 
human  nature  and  of  all  the  world.  This  is  no 
passing  fantasy.  The  monuments  of  English  liter- 
ature number  many  a  work  of  poetry  and  fiction  de- 
voted to  the  interpretation  of  village  communities, 
and  there  is  not  a  township  in  our  west  but  calls  for 
its  Gray  or  Austin  or  Hawthorne.  Furthermore, 
if  the  interest  be  scientific,  there  is  in  every  com- 
munity material  for  social  studies  that  should  be 
not  onlv  of  local,  but  of  state  and  national  value 


THE  TEACHER'S  PROFESSION  155 

We  all  know  what  missionaries  have  done  in  the 
way  of  "opening  up"  remote  quarters  of  earth  to 
the  knowledge  of  mankind.  The  process  of  "open- 
ing up"  is  never  completed  while  men  continue  to 
be  born,  and  it  should  be  a  part  of  the  teacher's  ex- 
pectation to  be  an  interpreter  of  human  nature  in 
whatever  community  his  task  is  set.  Such  an  in- 
terest was  that  of  Shakespeare,  such  that  of  George 
Eliot.  And  can  any  ask  from  life  a  more  inspiring 
gift? 


LETTER  XVI 

THE  TEACHER'S  LIFE 

I  WONDER  if  any  of  my  readers  shared  with 
me  the  feeHng  of  distaste  for  the  term  "teach- 
ing profession"  with  which  I  headed  my  last  letter. 
I  cannot  quite  explain  the  feeling — a  combination 
of  vague  apology  and  vague  resentment,  both  di- 
rected to  no  particular  source,  and  yet  firmly  at- 
taching to  just  this  union  of  words;  as  if  there  were 
no  truly  professional  character  to  teaching  or  as  if 
to  acknowledge  oneself  to  be  a  teacher  were  some- 
how discreditable.  The  title  of  "professor,"  which 
goes  with  certain  sorts  of  teaching,  seems  to  share 
this  same  nameless  opprobium — mild,  but  omni- 
present; so  that,  when  introduced  by  the  title,  one 
feels,  as  it  were,  a  spinal  invitation  to  cringe  as  half 
expecting  to  be  met  by  a  supercilious,  "Ah,  indeed !" 
Certainly  we  shall  all  be  rejoiced  when  the  practice 
of  the  teacher's  art  is  relieved  from  such  question- 
able honorifics,  meantime  wearing  them  with  such 
grace  as  may  be  ours. 

And  yet  (there  is  always  an  "and  yet") — and  yet 
teaching  is  a  profession,  as  noble  as  the  noblest.  It 
has  not,  in  its  outward  forms,  the  recognitions  that 
attach  to  many  other  professions;  it  is  notoriously 

157 


158  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

a  field  of  disproportion  of  material  returns  for  prep- 
aration and  labor  expended;  it  suffers  from  uncer- 
tainty of  organization  and  indefiniteness  of  status. 
But  in  spite  of  all  these  defects  it  has  attractions 
which  keep  the  ranks  filled  with  not  incapable  men 
and  women,  willing  to  devote  to  it  the  years  of  a 
lifetime.  It  owns,  indeed,  a  certain  inner  and  sub- 
tle fascination  which  is  far  easier  to  perceive  than 
to  define.  And  this,  it  appears  to  me,  it  is  of  the 
greatest  importance  for  teachers  themselves  to  un- 
derstand. Accordingly,  I  propose  to  devote  this, 
my  last  letter,  to  an  effort  to  show  wherein  I  con- 
ceive it  to  lie. 

What  first  comes  to  mind  as  the  true  satisfaction 
of  the  teacher  is  the  oft-spoken  privilege  of  observ- 
ing the  growth  of  that  most  wonderful  and  various 
of  growing  things,  the  human  mind.  It  is  a  great 
part  of  all  human  gratification  to  observe  and  influ- 
ence change,  and  especially  such  changes  as  are  in- 
timately connected  with  human  welfare.  Thus, 
the  farmer  takes  a  solid  satisfaction  in  the  growing 
crop,  quite  apart  from  its  market-price;  the  trades- 
man in  the  expansion  of  his  business;  the  physician 
in  his  cures;  the  engineer  in  the  success  of  a  diffi- 
cult project,  pitting  his  w^t  against  the  forces  of  na- 
ture. Something  of  the  same  thing,  but  assuredly 
in  increased  measure  because  of  the  subtlety  of  the 
psychical  forces  with  which  he  deals,  comes  to  the 
teacher  in  watching  and  molding  the  development 
of  the  minds  of  the  young.     My  dear  colleague  and 


THE  TEACHER'S  LIFE  159 

one-time  teacher,  Dr.  Wolfe  (born  to  the  art  if  ever 
teacher  was)'  puts  it:  "I  Hke  to  watch  their  eyes 
change," — well  knowing  that  the  changing  expres- 
sion of  the  eyes  is  the  most  sensitive  of  all  the  ex- 
pressional  barometers  of  the  mind. 

Such  an  interest  is,  of  course,  profoundly  per- 
sonal at  the  core.     It  rests  upon  mutual  confidence 
and  friendship, — qualities  upon  whose  significance 
we  might  devote  much  reflection ;  for  the  very  foun- 
dation of  all  human  welfare  is  ultimately  confidence 
and  friendship.     The  Greeks  (whom  all  the  world 
agrees  in  naming  wise)   devoted  many  a  discourse 
to  the  praise  of  friendship,  and  told  many  a  tale  of 
Damon  and  Pythias.     I  suppose  the  most  famous 
of  all  teachers  and  the  greatest  of  all  is  Socrates; 
and  you  will  remember  that  Socrates  was   friend 
first    and    teacher    only    through    his    friendships. 
You  will  remember,  too  (in  the  Meno  there  is  an 
amusing  description),  how  Socrates  always  turned 
from  the  elder  and  devoted  himself  to  the  younger 
men,  as  if  more  confident  of  youth  and  its  promise. 
Which  is  just  to  the  point.     Boys  and  girls  are  not, 
as  their  elders  are  apt  to  be,  ready  concealers  of 
their  natures  and  dispositions ;  they  have  not  yet  put 
on  a  mask ;  rather,  they  are  open  and  unsuspicious, 
and  show  their  souls'  depths  quite  unconsciously. 
Hence,  it  is  that  friendship  comes  easily  to  youth; 
and  the  teacher,  perpetually  dealing  with  youth,  is 
granted    the    perpetual    privilege    of    finding    new 

^Died  July  30,  1918. 


160  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

friendships,  which  for  other  men  and  women  be- 
come more  and  more  difficult  as  the  years  increase. 
What  with  their  faculties,  ideas,  ambitions,  aspira- 
tions ever  changing  into  brighter  and  more  varie- 
gated forms,  and,  with  the  intimacy  of  instruction, 
ever  more  generously  shown,  pupils  naturally  be- 
come comrades,  and  teachers  are  their  natural 
friends.  Thus  the  most  precious  of  all  treasures, 
a  sense  of  mutual  faith  and  of  human  fellowship, 
is  made  warm  and  vivid  and  in  a  special  sense  the 
teacher's  privilege. 

This.  I  say,  is  what  is  most  often  looked  upon  as 
the  great  reward  of  teaching.  Frequently  it  is 
likened  to  the  parent's  reward  in  the  rearing  of 
children.  That  it  is  a  genuine  and  precious  addi- 
tion to  the  teacher's  life  none  can  deny  who  have 
at  all  experienced  it ;  nor  need  any  one  who  has  seen 
examples  (as  assuredly  I  have)  doubt  for  a  moment 
that  with  many  teachers — those  born,  I  should  say, 
with  a  genius  for  friendship — it  is  an  all-sufficient 
reward  for  the  labor  of  teaching.  But  for  all  that, 
from  certain  points  of  view  and  to  many  teachers, 
especially  of  those  who  have  become  worn  through 
long  years  of  teaching,  it  is  insufficient.  For,  after 
all,  there  is  something  perpetually  one-sided  in  the 
friendship  of  teacher  to  pupil.  The  teacher  is  the 
unceasing  giver,  the  pupil  the  unceasing  recipient — 
a  relation  of  a  transitive  rather  than  of  a  reciprocal 
type.  I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  to  say  this  of  in- 
dividuals (for  there  are  abundant  exceptions,  truest 


THE  TEACHER'S  LIFE  161 

friendships  originated  in  the  class-room)  ;  but  I  do 
say  it  of  the  teacher  as  such  and  of  the  pupil  as 
such.     The  former  occupies  a  fixed  position,  the  lat- 
ter is  a  bird  of  passage ;  and  in  a  certain  true  sense 
the  teacher  is  in  the  situation  of  mine  host  of  the 
tavern,  who  gives  his  whole  life  to  serving  transient 
guests.     It  is  here  that  lies  the  fundamental  differ- 
ence between  the  parent's  and  teacher's  relation  to 
the  child.     The  parent  gives  freely  and  devotedly 
through  a  term  of  years,  but  the  time  comes  when 
the  antique  virtue  of  filial  piety  reverses  the  rela- 
tionship and  the  child  becomes  the  giver  and  care- 
taker and  the  perpetuator  of  the  family  name  and 
honor.     For  the  teacher  there  is  no  similar  return; 
the  giving  is  utterly  altruistic,  and  that  means  (if 
it  be  not  balanced  by  some  other  type  of  compensa- 
tion)   in  the  long  run  a  spiritual  impoverishment 
— for  it  must  be  well  borne  in  mind,  that  love,  to  be 
fruitful,  must  be  mutual.     The  teacher's  affection 
for  his  charge  is  to  parental  love  very  much  what 
platonic  love  is  to  true  love.     It  is  true,  that  in  cer- 
tain rare  ways  Plato's  Uranian  love  gives  rise  to 
very  fine  and  noble  human  relationships,  but  it  is 
also  true  that  the  normal  spiritual  health  of  man- 
kind lies  not  in  this  direction;  the  thing  may  be  ri- 
diculous.    Observers   have   long   and   often   noted 
"the  tired,   altruistic   faces"   of   school  teachers, — 
haloed,  as  it  were,  with  the  beauty  of  giving.     But 
there  is  also  a  certain  truth  in  the  cruel,  even  if  com- 
monplace, jests  directed  at  the  school  teacher's  face. 


162  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

Men's  countenances  are  the  speaking  books  of  their 
characters;  and  it  would  be  simple  defeat  of  the 
truth  to  deny  that  in  the  expression  which  long  serv- 
ice has  ingrained  into  the  features  of  many  a 
teacher,  the  plain  reading  is  spiritual  impoverish- 
ment. Against  this  it  should  be  the  whole  desire 
and  duty  of  those  who  cherish  the  profession  to 
guard :  their  desire,  because  the  teacher,  too,  has  a 
right  to  the  fulness  of  life;  their  duty,  because  the 
worn  teacher  is  like  an  abused  soil,  barren  and 
fruitless. 

Fortunately  the  way  of  salvation  is  not  far  to 
find.  It  has  been  pointed  by  philosopher  after 
philosopher  in  the  course  of  human  history,  and  its 
name  is  the  Idea.  I  mean  the  kind  of  Idea  that 
Plato  talked  about,  not  a  mere  present  possession 
of  the  mind,  but  a  pattern  of  minds  and  men  and 
human  natures  and  states  to  be.  Of  all  earthly 
things  that  men  create,  their  own  more  perfect  so- 
cieties, their  Utopias,  are  surely  the  finest;  and 
amongst  all  Utopias  those  of  teachers  are  first  and 
foremost.  This  is,  and  should  be,  their  perpetual 
source  of  invigoration  and  their  perpetual  and 
greatest  service  to  mankind.  It  is  theirs  (as  I  have 
said  in  other  letters)  to  preserve  out  of  the  past  its 
great  inheritance  of  human  ideals,  the  thing  we  call 
civilization.  But  it  is  also  to  them,  and  to  them 
more  than  to  any  other  class  or  profession,  that  is 
committed  the  task  of  framing  the  future.  Teach- 
ers are  statesmen  by  their  very  art,  and  it  should  be 


THE  TEACHER'S  LIFE  163 

their  one  deep  and  abiding  interest  to  become  wise 
in  statesmanship.  This,  assuredly,  is  a  fulness  of 
hfe. 

Doubtless  I  should  explain.  The  matter  comes 
from  the  very  fact  of  that  intimate  and  changing 
contact  with  youth,  the  teacher's  friendships,  of 
which  I  have  already  spoken.  Youth  is  the  forma- 
tive period;  it  is  the  period  of  the  shaping  of  gen- 
erous and  disinterested  ideals,  the  period  of  true 
public  spirit,  the  period  of  Castles  in  Spain  which 
are  none  the  less  one  day  to  become  models  of 
earthly  estates.  It  is  in  this  period  that  the  teach- 
er's influence  is  all-powerful,  and  it  is  because  of 
this  influence  that  his  is  perhaps  the  greatest  of  all 
forces  in  the  fashioning  of  the  future — wherefore 
I  speak  of  him,  and  truly,  as  a  statesman. 

And  in  one  very  important  particular  he  is  the 
most  qualified  of  statesmen.  We  all  recognize  the 
fact  that  wisdom  in  statecraft  is  in  large  part  de- 
pendent upon  knowledge  of  human  history:  our 
American  in  politics  must  know  history  and  under- 
stand the  ideals  of  his  country;  the  international 
politicians  must  comprehend  the  generations  of  men 
gone  by  and  the  ideals  toward  which  the}^'  strove 
through  the  slow  toils  of  the  centuries.  The  his- 
torian, by  the  very  nature  of  his  concern,  is  put  in 
a  position  of  detachment  with  reference  to  human 
affairs,  and  he  acquires  therefrom  the  ability  to 
judge  impartially  and  to  select  out  of  the  past  wis- 
dom   for   the    future.     But   necessarilv   he    suffers 


164  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

from  one  great  defect;  and  that  is  that  he  can  know 
the  past  never  directly,  as  man  to  man,  but  only  re- 
motely and  imaginatively,  divided  by  the  screen  of 
the  years  from  the  facts  which  he  scrutinizes ;  so 
that  he  can  never  quite  get  at  their  human,  living 
reality.  It  is  only  God  who  can  know  history  di- 
rectly and  truly. 

Now  the  teacher,  as  it  happens,  has  a  source  of 
knowledge  nearer  in  its  nature  to  a  divine  detach- 
ment than  has  any  other  mortal.  For  the  genera- 
tions of  students  who  come  and  go  under  his  charge 
are  like  the  generations  of  men  whom  the  historian 
surveys.  Only,  and  in  this  he  differs  from  the  his- 
torian, the  teacher  sees  these  generations  of  youth- 
ful minds  face  to  face,  and  thought  to  thought ; 
there  is  nothing  dead  or  passive  in  their  succession, 
as  is  the  case  with  the  historic  successions  of  the 
past;  rather,  all  is  living  and  shaping  and  life-creat- 
ing. This  it  is  which  gives  to  the  teacher  the 
opportunity  of  forming  an  unique  type  of  judgment 
of  human  nature  and  of  its  possibilities,  and  this  it 
is  which  makes  his  work  of  such  tremendous  sig- 
nificance in  the  ordering  of  the  policies  of  the  fu- 
ture ;  this,  too,  which  makes  it  imperative  that  your 
teacher  who  is  true  to  his  profession  is  of  necessity 
an  Utopian,  in  that  fair  sense  in  which  Utopia  is  a 
forecast  of  the  future  of  mankind. 

Most  of  all,  this  means  that  the  teacher  must  be 
framing  and  depicting  the  man,  the  citizen,  of  the 
world  that  is  to  be  tomorrow.     From  the  acts  and 


THE  TEACHER'S   LIFE  165 

ideas  of  the  eager  youth  that  pass  before  him  in 
the  class-room  he  must  come  to  know  human  pow- 
ers and  to  select  among  them  the  best  and  noblest; 
and  he  must  cultivate  those  better  powers;  and  he 
must  create  vivid  images  of  the  character  which 
they  represent,  that  the  youth  may  consciously  be- 
hold them,  and  beholding  may  set  themselves  to 
their  realization.  This  is  a  truly  prophetic  task ;  it 
calls  for  the  insight  of  the  seer  and  the  creative 
power  of  the  man  of  imagination.  It  demands  pa- 
tience, patience,  for  the  labor  is  slow;  but  its  re- 
wards are  as  precious  as  can  be  aught  human.  For 
surely  it  is  no  small  thing  to  be  an  architect  of  the 
habitations  of  the  future  and  no  small  thing  to  be- 
come a  portraitist,  in  the  living  flesh,  of  that  Man 
of  the  Future  who  is  to  embody  and  re-embody  all 
those  Utopian  dreams  which  are  the  essence  of  hu- 
man hope  and  the  solace  of  all  human  life.  Where- 
fore I  say,  let  us  rejoice  in  the  task  of  the  teacher, 
which  is  none  other  than  pilotage  in  the  great  voy- 
age of  spiritual  discovery. 


II 

FORIHGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY 


FOREIGN   LANGUAGE   STUDY 
I 

THE  question  of  foreign-language  study  is  ulti- 
mately— as  far  as  the  schools  are  concerned 
— a  college-curriculum  question.  Were  it  not  for 
the  fact  that  the  grade  schools  are  feeders  of  the 
colleges  and  that  the  colleges  require  foreign-lan- 
guage study,  there  can  be  no  serious  doubt  that  such 
subjects  would  drop  from  the  common  schools;  the 
Mockett  law  could  never  have  been  passed  in  Ne- 
braska had  there  been  no  German  taught  in  the 
State  University.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  minor 
non-college  problem  presented  by  parochial  schools 
in  which  foreign  languages  are  used  or  taught  for 
the  sake  of  preserving  religious  solidarities;  but 
even  conceding  that  this  problem  is  of  some  mo- 
ment, its  present  proportions  make  it,  by  compari- 
son, insignificant.  It  is  the  policy  of  the  colleges 
with  respect  to  language  study  that  really  deter- 
mines, and  doubtless  will  continue  to  determine, 
the  complexion  of  our  education.  An  illustration 
in  point  is  the  recent  experience  of  a  university 
instructor.  A  high-school  principal  from  one  of 
our  smaller  towns  entered  a  summer-school  course 
in  Anglo-Saxon;  before  the  end  of  the  term  he  re- 

169 


170  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

vealed  his  motive.  "Several  years  ago,"  he  said, 
we  dropped  Latin,  when  the  University  ceased  to 
require  it,  and  substituted  German.  Now  we  are 
dropping  German, — and,  don't  you  think,  for  the 
sake  of  knowledge  of  English,  w^e  ought  to  put  in 
Anglo-Saxon?"  Of  course,  the  man  was  but  one 
of  God's  fools  misplaced;  but  his  state  of  mind 
illustrates  the  primary  responsibility  of  the  college, 
and  shows,  too,  that  his  folly  was  not  altogether  of 
his  own  making.  Clearly,  the  whole  question  must 
be  handled  from  the  college  point  of  view. 

And  what,  from  the  college  point  of  view,  is  the 
value  of  the  study  of  foreign  language?  There  are 
a  number  of  trite  answers,  most  of  which,  judged  by 
the  test  of  time,  have  proved  unconvincing.  The 
oldest  and  worst  of  these  is  that  the  study  is  dis- 
ciplinary, that  no  matter  how  little  mastery  is  at- 
tained by  the  pursuit  of  language  study  it  has  some- 
how exalted  the  individual's  power  of  clear  think- 
ing. As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  nothing  of  this 
kind  in  foreign-language  study  comparable  in  value 
or  effect  with  the  study  of  mathematics  or  logic  or 
a  rigorous  English  grammar;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  the  disciplinary  conception  that  has  vir- 
tually killed  the  pursuit  of  the  classical  languages 
for  the  upgrowing  generation.  Again,  it  is  urged 
that  the  study  of  foreign  languages  aids  mastery 
of  English ;  and  this  is  in  a  measure  true,  though 
not  economically  true.  To  study  either  Latin  or 
French    (which    are   the   most   helpful   of    foreign 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  171 

tongues  in  this  respect)  for  the  betterment  of  one's 
English  is  very  much  Hke  going  to  Rome  in  order  to 
arrive  at  London:  the  best  and  surest  path  to  an 
acquaintance  with  one's  own  tongue  is  a  deep  famil- 
iarity with  its  native  literature. 

Again,  and  more  tellingly,  there  is  the  practical 
reason,  of  acquiring  a  language  for  use.  We  cer- 
tainly desire  scholars  and  scientists  in  our  nation,  if 
we  desire  to  remain  among  the  civilized.  But  no 
scholar  or  scientist  can  expect  to  attain  a  first  place 
in  his  subject  if  he  have  not  a  usable  acquaintance 
with  Latin,  French,  and  German ;  and  in  the  not  dis- 
tant future  Italian  and  a  number  of  other  modern 
tongues  will  be  in  the  same  category.  This  is  recog- 
nized in  our  best  schools,  where  knowledge  of  these 
languages  is  requisite  to  the  attainment  of  the  high- 
est degree,  that  of  doctor  of  philosophy.  Next  in 
importance  to  the  scholarly  and  scientific  need  is  the 
commercial.  Here  it  commonly  extends  but  to  the 
acquisition  of  one  foreign  tongue;  and  what  that 
shall  be  is  largely  predetermined  by  the  intention  of 
the  student.  Unquestionably,  where  the  intention  is 
not  for  a  definitely  foreseen  career,  French  is  the 
most  valuable  of  foreign  tongues,  being  virtually 
the  lingua  franca  of  the  civilized  world.  After 
French,  for  Americans,  Spanish  is  first  in  value, 
not  only  because  of  our  Spanish-speaking  posses- 
sions, but  because  of  our  necessarily  growing  inter- 
course with  our  southern  neighbors.  German 
would  fall  in  a  third  place  in  this  series,  and  there 


172  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

is  some  probability  that  Russian  may  soon  pass  it 
in  importance.  Besides  the  scholarly  and  the  com- 
mercial, a  third  practical  support  of  language  study 
is  the  increasing  significance  of  our  diplomatic  rep- 
resentation. The  diplomatic  service  will  never,  of 
course,  engage  a  large  proportion  of  the  educated; 
but  it  will  certainly  offer  careers  of  increasing  at- 
tractiveness to  young  men  gifted  for  it,  and  in  that 
gift  there  must  be  an  aptitude  for  foreign  tongues. 
Combined,  these  practical  reasons  are  alone  suffi- 
cient to  ensure  the  continuance  of  foreign-language 
study  in  our  higher  schools ;  they  are  not,  however, 
sufficient  to  justify  the  requirement  of  language 
study  of  any  student  who  knows  his  own  mind  in 
the  matter.  The  real  crux  of  the  language  question 
is  elsewhere. 

It  has  been  phrased  by  Lord  Bryce,  in  a  recent 
address,  perspicaciously.  Education  is  a  response 
to  our  natural  human  curiosity,  our  desire  to  know. 
Knowledge  is  broadly  of  two  kinds, — of  men  and 
of  nature,  of  human  thought  and  of  the  human  en- 
vironment. It  is  to  science  that  we  turn  for  the 
latter  kind  of  knowledge ;  science  is  our  key  to  na- 
ture. It  is  to  the  humanities  that  we  turn,  and  must 
turn,  for  our  knowledge  of  men,  and  for  our  partici- 
pation in  the  whole  complexitiy  of  that  subtle 
hereditament  which  we  name  civilization.  The 
humanities,  in  widest  sense,  mean  knowledge  of 
books ;  and  we  might  truly  say  that  the  laboratory 
and  the  library  are  the  material  emblems  of  these 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  173 

two  fundamental  branches  of  the  tree  of  knowledge. 

Now  knowledge  of  books  is  a  matter  of  reading 
(which  needs  to  be  said  only  because  it  is  so  often 
forgotten)  ;  and  reading  is  an  art  which  can  be 
profitably  pursued  only  by  those  who  have  acquired 
the  power  to  select, — just  as  the  laboratory  is  useful 
only  to  those  who  understand  its  instruments.  Nor 
is  the  making  of  a  good  reader  less  arduous  than  is 
the  making  of  a  good  experimentalist;  it  presup- 
poses not  merely  a  continual  training,  but  also  some 
natural  calling.  Granted  the  taste  and  the  indus- 
try, there  remains  but  the  opening  up  of  the  priv- 
ilege of  books, — and  this  is  what  the  liberal  college 
aims  to  provide. 

The  privilege  of  books,  in  any  meaningful  sense, 
is  the  privilege  of  the  best  books.  Many  of  these 
(and  may  the  praise  of  posterity  long  be  to  their 
makers!)  are  in  the  English  tongue,  by  right  of  cre- 
ation; but  many  more  are  in  other  languages,  lan- 
guages which  must  be  learned — partially,  as  lan- 
guages are  always  learned — in  order  that  they  may 
be  partially  understood.  I  know,  of  course,  that 
the  English-speaking  world  is  now  rich  in  transla- 
tions of  foreign  masterpieces,  and  many  of  them 
superb  translations ;  and  I  know  that  a  very  great 
treasure  may  be  derived  from  the  study  of  these 
works  in  translation:  if  any  question  this,  one  need 
but  mention  King  James's  Version,  and  he  is  an- 
swered. .  But  it  is  also  true,  as  everyone  who  has 
ever  really  caught  the  spirit  of  a  foreign  tongue  will 


174  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

attest,  that  at  the  best  a  translation  is  but  a  pale 
reflection  of  its  original;  or  if  (as  at  times  happens) 
it  better  the  original,  it  is  essentially  another  work. 
It  is  hard  to  say  this  convincingly;  but  if  we  accept 
Lord  Bryce's  criterion,  that  the  best  judge  is  the 
man  who  has  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  work 
in  translation  and  has  afterwards  learned  to  know 
it  in  the  original,  we  shall  discover  that  the  testi- 
mony to  the  worth  of  the  effort  is  virtually  unani- 
mous. 

Nor  should  it  be  necessary  to  repeat  the  obvious 
in  saying  that  we  do  not  make  acquaintance  with 
the  ideas  expressed  in  a  foreign  tongue  merely  for 
their  formal  (or,  as  a  scholastic  might  say  it,  their 
intellective)  value :  the  power  of  a  conception  comes 
from  the  vigor  of  the  context  in  which  it  is  set,  and 
a  main  part  of  that  context  is  inevitably  conveyed 
by  the  color  of  its  native  dialect.  Philosophy,  be- 
cause it  seeks  the  universal,  should  suffer  less  than 
other  types  of  literature  from  this  defect;  but  even 
in  Jowett's  splendid  English  something  of  his  nat- 
ural glory  is  faded  from  Plato. 

It  is  for  the  sake  of  literature,  and  knowledge  of 
literature,  that  we  encourage  the  study  of  foreign 
languages,  as  an  essential  part  of  a  humanistic  edu- 
cation; nor  has  the  study  any  other  justification  be- 
sides knowledge  of  literature  which  will  perpetuate 
it  beyond  the  bare  limits  of  practical  necessity.  But 
it  needs  no  other.  Literature — imaginative,  politi- 
cal, historical,  philosophical — is  a  thing  of  such  su- 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  175 

preme  importance  to  civilization  that  every  effort 
and  every  premium  we  can  give  to  the  cultivation  of 
its  tradition  is  but  small  measure  of  its  value;  and 
I  mean  by  this  value,  not  merely  its  returns  to  the 
individual  who  acquires  the  knowledge,  but  its  far 
richer  returns  to  the  whole  society  in  which  that 
individual  lives.  Colleges  exist  for  the  training  of 
literate  citizens,  for  the  reason  that  literate  citizens 
are  indispensable  to  the  good  state. 

II 

But,  the  value  of  foreign-language  study  con- 
ceded, there  remains  the  question  what  language  or 
languages  are  the  best  selection  for  him  who  would 
be  both  an  educated  man  and  a  qualified  American 
citizen.  No  average  mortal  can  expect  to  become 
intimately  familiar  with  more  than  two  or  three 
languages  including  his  own  (which  requires  honest 
study  for  its  mastery  quite  as  distinctly  as  do  for- 
eign tongues).  Here,  in  the  problem  of  selection, 
is  our  real  difificulty,  for  it  is  here  that  differences 
of  opinion  are  real;  on  the  general  question  of  the 
retention  of  some  foreign-language  study  the  sense 
of  the  community  is  virtually  a  determined  affirma- 
tive. 

The  problem  of  selection  itself  may  be  approached 
from  several  different  angles,  even  when  the  ap- 
praisal is  to  be  made  purely  with  reference  to  liter- 
ary values  (literature  in  the  broad  sense  which  in- 
cludes historical  and  speculative  as  well  as  aesthetic 


176  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

writings).  There  is,  first,  the  educationally  practi- 
cal question  of  economy  of  time,  or  of  returns  in 
attainment  for  effort  expended — a  question  of  no 
small  importance  when  curricula  are  crowded  with 
subjects  as  is  the  case  today.  There  is,  second,  the 
question  of  the  intrinsic  values  of  the  literatures  in- 
volved, that  is,  as  to  which  bodies  of  human  expres- 
sion in  foreign  tongues  are  best  worth  while.  There 
is,  third,  the  related,  but  rather  more  psychological 
question,  of  the  qualities  of  languages  as  forms  of 
expression,  and  hence  as  to  the  particular  tone  which 
each  can  give  to  the  learner's  thought  and  expres- 
sion. Each  of  these  questions  has  ramifications, 
which  I  shall  endeavor  to  suggest,  taking  them  in 
order. 

The  question  of  what  languages  are  most  eco- 
nomical, yielding  the  surest  return  for  the  effort 
expended,  must  be  considered  both  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  teaching  and  the  learning.  It  is  en- 
tirely clear  that  the  profit  of  pursuing  the  study  of 
a  foreign  tongue  is  in  great  measure  determined  by 
the  proficiency  with  which  it  is  taught.  This,  in 
itself,  operates  as  a  practical  limitation  of  under- 
graduate choices.  In  the  University  of  Nebraska 
choice  for  lower  classmen  is  limited  to  Latin,  Greek, 
French,  German,  Italian,  Spanish,  and  certain  Scan- 
dinavian and  Slavonic  languages.  It  is  quite  con- 
ceivable that  a  man  might  enter  the  University  pre- 
ferring Hebrew  or  Chinese — and  for  very  good 
reasons — to  any  of  these;  but  the  fact  that  these 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  177 

languages  are  not  taught  would  bar  him  from  their 
profitable  study.  This  aspect  becomes  one  of  great 
importance  when  we  turn  from  actual  college  courses 
to  high-school  preparation  for  colleges ;  for  very  few 
of  our  preparatory  schools  teach  more  than  two 
non-English  tongues.  This  matter  of  preparation 
is  of  prime  importance  to  the  learner :  a  language 
once  begun  is  a  language  to  pursue,  be  the  beginning 
in  the  home  or  the  school.  The  main  reason  for 
the  undergraduate  teaching  of  Danish,  Swedish, 
and  Bohemian  is  that  so  many  of  our  youth  have  a 
partial  acquaintance  with  these  tongues  from  their 
parents ;  and  this  is  also  the  main  reason  for  the 
emphasis  that  has  been  laid  upon  German  in  Ne- 
braska. It  is  a  perfectly  good  reason,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  economy  of  effort,  just  as,  from 
the  same  point  of  view,  it  is  wise  to  advise  a  boy 
who  has  begun  Latin  or  German  in  the  high  school 
to  continue  with  the  same  language  in  college,  until 
he  has  a  usable  acquaintance  with  it. 

Apart  from  such  consideration  the  question  of 
economy  resolves  into  one  of  difficulty  and  aptitude. 
The  charge  of  excessive  difficulty  is  one  of  the  over- 
used arguments  against  the  classical  languages.  If 
it  be  merely  a  matter  of  learning  to  read  texts,  it  is 
true  that  French  or  German  is  easier  to  learn  to  read, 
for  the  boy  of  average  aptitude,  than  is  Latin  or 
Greek.  But  if  we  add  the  requirements  of  conversa- 
tional acquaintance  in  the  modern  tongue,  which  is 
usually  urged  as  a  large  factor  in  its  value,  then  the 


178  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

scale  of  difficulty  almost  certainly  tips  in  the  other 
direction :  it  is  easier  to  learn  to  read  either  classical 
language  than  it  is  to  learn  to  read  and  speak  fluently 
either  modern  tongue, — that  is,  for  the  average  boy 
knowing  only  his  mother  tongue  to  start  with.  Fur- 
ther, it  is  certainly  easier  to  get  effective  preparatory 
teaching  in  Latin  than  in  modern  languages;  partly 
because  it  is  a  language  read  and  not  spoken  and 
partly  because  long  experience  has  reduced  its  teach- 
ing to  something  like  pedagogical  precision.  Again, 
a  small  acquaintance  with  Latin  is  of  more  general 
value  than  is  a  small  acquaintance  with  any  other 
language, — I  refer  to  Latin  grammar  and  to  certain 
elementary  forms  of  expression  current  with  Eng- 
lish; so  that,  on  the  whole,  if  but  a  single  year  could 
be  devoted  to  language  study  Latin  is  by  all  means 
the  language  to  recommend.  Of  modern  languages, 
French,  by  common  experience,  is  the  easiest  for  the 
unprepared  American  to  acquire,  and  judged  by  the 
test  of  economy,  it  should  properly  stand  next  to 
Latin  in  the  high-school  curriculum.  It  may  be  re- 
peated here,  as  said  above,  that  it  is  also  these  two 
languages  that  are  of  most  service  for  the  better- 
ment of  the  student's  English — which  may  surely  be 
regarded  as  an  added  economy. 

On  the  whole,  a  judgment  of  foreign  tongues 
with  respect  to  their  literary  significance  (for  the 
American  citizen)  fortifies  this  evaluation.  Liter- 
atures must  be  judged  for  the  complete  range  of 
their  expression,  historical  and  political  as  well  as 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  179 

aesthetic  and  philosophical.  No  sane  critic  will  deny- 
that  for  aesthetic  and  philosophical  value  alone  no 
literature  equals  the  Greek;  nor  will  any  sound 
critic  question  the  fact  that  Latin  owns  a  similar 
primacy  in  the  domain  of  history  and  politics,  while 
it  m.ay  be  regarded  as  a  strong  rival  for  the  second 
place  with  respect  to  artistic  and  philosophical  sig- 
nificance. It  is  probable  that  even  now  there  are 
more  books  and  documents  in  Latin  than  in  any 
other  language,  taking  the  world  over;  and  Latin 
possesses  the  unique  value  of  opening  to  the  student 
two  of  the  greatest  periods  of  human  history — the 
period  of  pagan  and  imperial  Rome  and  the  great 
period  of  mediaeval  Christianity.  Second  to  Latin, 
in  all  respects,  stands  French.  It  succeeded  Latin 
as  the  language  of  diplomacy;  it  became,  and  still 
is,  the  model  of  polite  letters ;  it  contains  more  books 
of  first  importance — many  of  them,  as  the  works  of 
Leibnitz  and  Rosseau,  written  by  men  who  were  not 
born  Frenchmen — than  any  other  modern  tongue; 
and  its  literature  embraces  a  greater  range  of  ideas 
significant  for  civilization  than  does  that  of  any 
other  modern  tongue.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
literary  art,  French  is,  with  Latin,  a  rival  for  the 
second  place  after  Greek ;  and  as  a  language  of  great 
prose,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  greatest  of  prose 
writers,  Plato,  was  a  Greek,  French  is  more  impor- 
tant than  is  Greek. 

In  this  evaluation  I  have  not  considered  English ; 
I  have  contemplated  only  foreign  languages.     But 


180  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

in  order  to  appraise  the  whole  group  of  study  lan- 
guages with  which  a  student  may  hope  to  make  ac- 
quaintance, it  is  worth  while  to  set  English  in  the 
measure.  If  we  take  as  a  measure  the  poetic  mas- 
ters in  a  language  concerning  whose  position  critics 
are  virtually  agreed,  Greek,  again,  obtains  a  tri- 
umphant first  place,  with  Homer  and  the  three  tra- 
gedians in  a  class  for  which  the  only  later  candidates 
are  Virgil,  a  Latin,  Dante,  an  Italian,  and  Shakes- 
peare and  Milton,  two  English  poets.  In  a  second 
class,  which  should  still  include  "world  poets"  (if 
the  term  be  not  too  vague)  the  Greeks  are  numer- 
ous ;  Horace  is  the  most  conspicuous  Latin,  Petrarch, 
the  Italian;  France  is  represented  not  only  by  her 
three  classical  dramatists,  but  properly  also  by  the 
medic-eval  authors  of  the  romantic  cycles;  Germany, 
by  Goethe;  while  England  is  dubiously  represented 
by  Byron, — in  a  place  which,  in  my  opinion,  ought 
to  belong  to  Shelley.  From  a  mere  regard  of  su- 
preme masters — Homer,  Dante,  Shakespeare — 
Greek,  Italian,  and  English  are  pre-eminent.  But  a 
language  is  not  school-learned  for  the  sake  of  a 
single  author,  no  matter  what  his  mastership;  liter- 
atures must  be  taken  as  wholes.  And  again,  there 
is  some  artificiality  in  comparing  the  ancient  with 
the  modern.  In  a  quite  precise  sense,  the  literatures 
of  modern  languages  are  represented  by  the  vernacu- 
lar books  of  the  last  three  centuries,  and  taking 
these,  all  in  all,  French,  English,  and  German  (in 
the  order  named  unless  the  weight  of  the  two  great 
English  poets  may  put  English  first)  are  the  literary 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  181 

as  well  as  the  scholarly  tongues  of  the  western 
world.  German  literature  became  important  at  a 
period  (the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century)  con- 
siderably later  than  either  of  the  others,  and  it 
suffers  somewhat  in  comparison  from  the  fact  that 
so  much  of  its  significant  work  is  so  in  a  scholarly 
rather  than  an  aesthetic  sense ;  so  that  on  the  whole, 
it  is  for  the  sake  of  scholarship  that  its  study  is  of 
chief  importance  to  the  American  of  today. 

There  still  remains  for  consideration  the  third 
standard  of  evaluation,  with  respect  to  the  qualities 
of  languages  as  instruments  of  thought  and  expres- 
sion. This  is  a  field  in  which  it  is  easy  to  become 
mired  in  thick  dispute;  many  of  the  proffered  rea- 
sons are  really  but  prepossessions.  Thus,  there  is 
the  traditional  (since  Renaissance  times)  assump- 
tion that  there  is  some  special  virtue  in  a  complexity 
of  inflectional  , forms,  an  assumption  proceedin'g 
from  the  fact  that  the  classical  tongues  are  highly 
inflected.  A  similar  virtue  is  often  urged  for  Ger- 
man, namely  its  power  of  word-formation  by  a 
process  which  is  essentially  agglutination.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  it  may  be  reasonably  argued  that  both  in- 
flection and  agglutination  are  marks  of  primitive- 
ness  and  awkwardness  in  speech.  The  general  trend 
of  Indo-European  tongues  has  been  from  inflec- 
tional to  analytical  forms  of  expression,  and  this 
is  as  true  of  Hindustani  and  modern  Persian 
as  it  is  of  French  and  English — all  of  them 
highly  analytic  forms  of  speech.     Such  a  tendency, 


182  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

setting  in  with  the  beginnings  of  modern  civiHza- 
tion  and  keeping  equal  pace  with  the  advance  of 
general  culture,  ought  surely  to  be  regarded  as  a 
sign  of  linguistic  progress,  rather  than  decadence; 
and  if  so  regarded,  English,  as  the  most  analytical 
of  Occidental  tongues  would  be  viewed  as  the  most 
developed,  with  French  a  close  second.  By  the  same 
standard,  German  would  be  more  belated  than  are 
the  Romance  languages,  or  than  are  most  of  the 
Teutonic  dialects. 

But  the  true  tests  of  linguistic  perfection  are  the 
logical  and  aesthetic  qualities  of  languages,  that  is, 
the  range  of  ideas  and  the  grace  of  expression  of 
which  they  are  capable.  These  are  qualities  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  identify  apart  from  the  fact  of  their 
presentation  in  actual  works, — logic  is  a  fact  of 
effective  philosophical  and  scientific  writing,  grace 
is  the  fact  of  poetic  style.  If  there  be  any  general 
criterion  of  the  range  of  ideas  of  which  a  language 
is  capable,  that  criterion  must  be  the  size  of  its  vo- 
cabulary. Words  which  are  living  words  are  expres- 
sions of  distinctions,  and  that  tongue  which  owns 
the  greatest  body  of  words  is  the  one  which  knows 
the  most  distinctions.  This  we  realize  the  moment 
we  contrast  the  vocabulary  of  a  civilized  tongue  with 
that  of  a  savage  speech ;  the  difference  in  the  range 
of  ideas  is  just  what  makes  the  one  civilized  and  the 
other  savage.  Judged  by  this  standard  alone,  Eng- 
lish is  by  far  the  richest  of  languages,  being  as  pre- 
eminent in  the  modern  world  as  was  Greek  in  the 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  183 

ancient.  However,  it  would  be  dangerous  to  assume 
that  quantity  of  speech-material  is  the  sole  criterion 
of  effectiveness,  or  that  there  are  any  important 
conceptions  untranslatable  from  one  modern  tongue 
to  another;  and  we  know,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that 
the  agglutinative  genius  of  German,  enabling  the 
ready  and  picturesque  formation  of  words,  is  a  fair 
compensation  for  its  lesser,  as  it  were,  official 
vocabulary. 

The  final  test  of  linguistic  excellence  is  grace,  the 
capacity  for  an  elevated  style.  This  is  the  quality 
which  it  is  peculiarly  the  function  of  genius  to  de- 
velop and  make  manifest:  as  Longinus  phrases  it, 
sublimity  of  style  is  the  echo  of  a  noble  mind ;  and  it 
is,  therefore,  peculiarly  indiscerptible  from  the 
masterpieces  in  which  it  is  present.  Nevertheless, 
there  are  certain  indications  of  a  purely  linguistic 
character  by  which  the  grace  of  a  tongue  may  in  a 
way  be  defined.  Euphony  is  one  of  these  indica- 
tions, determined  by  both  the  sounds  that  enter  into 
the  composition  of  words  and  the  rhythms  of  verbal 
phrase.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  singer,  the 
vovs^el  is  everything;  and  if  singing-quality  alone 
were  to  be  taken  into  account,  Italian  and  Nor- 
wegian would  carry  the  palm  among  modern  Euro- 
pean tongues.  But  it  is  a  mistake  to  identify  linguis- 
tic euphony  with  musical  quality  in  this  artificially 
musical  sense;  modern  languages  are  not  primarily 
singing  languages,  nor  are  men  birds.  Swinburne, 
it  is  said,  could  not  tolerate  the  art  of  music,  and 


184  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

Swinburne  is  the  greatest  recent  master  of  English 
euphony.  The  quahties  that  go  to  make  the  hterary 
euphony  of  which  he  and  other  great  writers  are 
masters  are  the  quahties  of  articulation  and  modula- 
tion in  sound,  coupled  with  range  and  flexibility  of 
rhythm.  Excellence  in  these  characters  depends  not 
only  upon  vowel  but  also  upon  consonantal  variety, 
and  again  upon  what  I  should  call  the  cleanness  of 
the  sound  elements — that  is,  upon  absence  of  gut- 
terals  and  nasals  and  moderation  of  sibilants. 
Greek  is  certainly  the  model  language  in  such  sonant 
excellence,  and  among  modern  European  tongues,  I 
should  again  rank  English  first:  English  has  long 
outgrown  the  gutterals  which  still  deform  German; 
it  is  badly  weighted  with  sibilants  (its  greatest  eu- 
phonic defect),  but  they  are  dominantly  less  ob- 
noxious than  the  German  combinations  of  stops  and 
sibilants,  which  give  a  mouthy  awkwardness  to  Ger- 
man ;  while,  as  compared  with  French,  our  sibilants 
are  fairly  offsets  by  their  nasalizations.  With  re- 
spect to  rhythm,  English  is  again  first.  Rhythmic 
freedom  is  partly  dependent  upon  syllabic  accent, 
but  mainly  upon  syntactical  freedom;  and  in  re- 
spect to  syntactical  freedom  analytical  languages 
possess  great  advantages. — and  English  certainly  is 
the  freest  of  all.  French,  through  its  loss  of  formal 
accent,  loses  in  range,  though  it  gains  in  rhythmic 
subtlety,  and  is  in  this  sense  the  fair  complement,  as 
it  has  been  the  honored  teacher,  of  English.  All 
in  all.   for  sonant  articulation  and  rhvthmic  flexi- 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  185 

bility  English  is  the  first  of  modern  tongues,  at  least 
among  the  western  European.  Spanish  is,  in  my 
judgment,  its  nearest  peer,  and  German  certainly 
the  most  backward  of  the  great  western  languages. 

But  grace  of  speech  is  by  no  means  merely  a  mat- 
ter of  euphony.  The  variety  of  relational  forms — 
pronouns,  prepositions,  conjunctions,  verbal  auxil- 
iaries, etc.;  the  number  and  quality  of  the  idioms; 
the  development  of  diction  levels,  from  the  concrete 
and  homely  to  the  archaic,  poetic,  and  abstract; — 
all  these  are  crucial  factors  in  the  instrumental 
beauty  of  languages.  English  is  a  backward  lan- 
guage in  the  first  respect,  its  weakness  in  relational 
forms  being  made  awkwardly  emphatic  by  its  weak- 
ness in  the  range  of  gender  forms  and  usages;  in 
the  other  two  particulars,  the  closely  connected 
qualities  of  idiomatic  and  dictional  variety,  it  is  a 
very  advanced  language.  It  is  virtually  unique 
among  European  tongues  in  being  a  double  lan- 
guage, both  in  respect  to  vocabulary  and  idiomatic 
structure ;  for  in  English  the  Teutonic  and  Romance 
elements  are,  as  it  were,  wedded  like  man  and  wife, 
each  preserving  its  individual  distinction,  while  the 
two  are  yet  one  in  their  mutual  co-operation  and 
sympathy.  This  is  an  advantage  so  huge  that  it 
outweighs  all  defects,  and  makes  of  English  an  in- 
strument of  the  intelligence  superior  to  Greek  itself. 

English  being  so  composed,  the  fundamentally 
important  question  is  from  what  linguistic  sources 
may  it  be  most  beneficially  influenced;  especially, 


186  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

has  it  most  to  gain  from  Teutonic  or  from  Romance 
influences?     This  question   is  partly  answered  by 
experience  and  may  be  further  answered  by  reason. 
In  the  past  the  great  assimilations  have  been  of  the 
Romance   element  by   the   Teutonic.      French   and 
Latin  have  given  English  nearly  the  whole  of  its 
polite  and  lettered  discourse;  word  and  idiom  alike 
have  been  freely  assimilated,  to  such  an  extent,  in- 
deed, that  one  might  almost  say  that  our  tongue 
has  been  habituated  to  French  forms  of  speech  as 
our  bodies  are  habituated  to  French  forms  of  cloth- 
ing; we  take  on  both  with  native  unconsciousness. 
German,  on  the  other  hand,  has  offered  the  most 
stubborn  and  awkward  materials  for  adoption.     It 
is  difficult   to   acclimate   even   a   German   word   in 
English  speech,  while  all  of  the  efforts  that  have 
been  made  to  reproduce  Germanic  literary  modes  in 
our  tongue  have  been  experimental  and   fruitless. 
Both   Spanish  and  Italian  have  been  vastly  more 
influential  upon  English  speech  than  has  German. 
Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  anticipate  a  change  in  this 
respect.     The   Teutonic   foundation  of   English   is 
limited  to  the  homely  and^very  finite  range  of  sensu- 
ous affairs,  concerned,  as  a  philosopher  might  say, 
with  the  vegetative  and  passional  functions  of  the 
soul;  the  classical  and  Romance  expansion  of  the 
tongue  has  been  almost  wholly  an  affair  of  the  in- 
tellective soul,   descriptive  of  things  of  the  mind. 
German  itself,  in  antc-hellmn  days,  drew  liberally 
upon  these  same  sources  for  similar  service.     But 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  187 

it  is  exactly  in  respect  to  things  of  the  mind  that 
civiHzation  grows  and  must  continue  to  grow.  We 
make  no  rash  assumption,  therefore,  in  insisting  that 
it  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  for  the  heahh  of  our 
mother  tongue,  that  she  continue  her  wholly  fruit- 
ful intimacy  with  the  classical  tongues  and  their 
offspring. 

The  upshot  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  viewed 
from  every  angle,  the  foreign  languages  best  worth 
cultivation,  for  the  sake  of  literature,  are  the  classi- 
cal and  Romance  tongues,  and  in  particular,  Latin, 
French,  and  Greek.  I  put  them  in  this  order,  for 
this  is  the  order  in  which  I  should  recommend  them 
to  a  student  asking  my  advice.  If  it  should  be 
asked  what  language  I  would  make  fourth,  I  should 
say  German;  for  while  I  regard  Dante  and  Cer- 
vantes as  more  significant  figures  than  Goethe,  in 
the  whole  of  European  literature,  yet  the  great 
scholastic  and  scientific  literature  of  Germany  gives 
to  German  an  unimpeachable  preference  as  com- 
pared with  Italian  and  Spanish.  Furthermore,  the 
student  M'ho  has  learned  French  and  Latin  will  ac- 
quaint himself  with  Italian  and  Spanish  with  mini- 
mum effort. 

Ill 

A  phase  of  the  question  of  foreign-language  study 

to  which  I  wish  to  advert  briefly  is  its  social  and 

political  value.    In  the  broad  view,  higher  education 

is  encouraged  in  states  because  it  is  valuable  to  the 


188  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

States,  and  not  merely  a  private  advantage  to  indi- 
viduals. Language  study  is  a  feature  of  curricula 
for  the  same  sound  reason.  It  is  advantageous  to 
the  communitv  to  have  in  its  midst  men  familiar 
with  what  has  been  thought  in  the  historic  past  and 
with  what  is  being  thought  in  the  living  present, 
the  world  over.  This  advantage  alone  would  call 
for  the  widest  range  of  language  study  which  we 
can  make  effective;  and  I  certainly  hope  that  the 
near  future  will  see,  not  only  the  languages  of 
western  Europe,  but  those  of  eastern  Asia,  subjects 
of  college  encouragement.  A  capable  Chinese 
scholar  is  an  ornament  to  any  community,  and  a 
thoroughly  useful  citizen. 

But  there  is  still  another,  and  possibly  subtler 
reason,  for  encouraging  the  cultivation  of  variety 
in  foreign-language  study.  The  United  States  has 
been  called  "the  Melting  Pot,"  which  can  only  mean 
that  the  amalgam  from  which  the  future  American 
citizen  is  to  be  cast  will  not  be  precisely  of  the  color 
of  any  of  the  metals  cast  into  the  crucible.  We 
cannot  expect  this  future  citizen  to  be  melted  down 
to  the  hue  of  the  Revolutionary  Anglo-Saxon,  nor, 
I  think,  should  we  wish  it.  Rather — if  we  have  that 
faith  in  our  common  humanity  which  we  so  vocifer- 
ously express — we  should  hope  to  derive  some  essen- 
tial brilliance  from  each  element  added  to  the 
compound. 

Such  result  will  be  best  attained  if  we  permit  and 
encourage  each  immigrational  wave  to  bring  with  it 


FOREIGN  LANGUAGE  STUDY  189 

and  to  cultivate  the  best  that  it  has  originated  in  its 
first  home;  and  that  best — we  can  say  it  without 
hesitation — will  be  found  in  its  noblest  literature. 
Familiarity  with  the  best  that  has  been  expressed 
in  every  human  tongue — that  is  a  social  good  for 
which  we  can  well  afford  to  expend  time,  money, 
and  effort ;  and  it  is  a  good  which  the  United  States, 
as  a  community,  may  attain  with  perhaps  less  effort 
than  any  other  great  nation,  just  because  our  popu- 
lation is  an  undispersed  Babel.  Traditions  are  not 
made  in  a  day,  and  traditions  which  are  ideals  puri- 
fied out  of  centuries  of  experience  are  treasures  not 
to  be  disregarded.  Our  task  should  be,  by  every 
reasonable  means,  to  encourage  the  preservation  of 
the  best  in  the  ideals  of  all  peoples  who  come  to 
us ;  and  this  can  most  effectively  be  done  by  keeping 
alive  in  them  the  knowledge  of  the  best  in  their 
native  Hteratures. 

I  think,  of  course,  that  we  should  insist  that  the 
study  of  English — language,  literature,  history — be 
made  primary  in  every  form  of  the  education  of 
the  American  citizen ;  and  I  am  in  favor  of  laws 
prohibiting  parochial  or  other  private  education  in 
exclusively  foreign  tongues  or  without  state  super- 
vision. But  it  would  be  social  imbecility  not  to  keep 
alive  and  vigorous  the  pursuit  of  the  broadest  pos- 
sible range  of  literary  studies. 


Ill 

COMMUNITY  PAGEANTRY 


COMMUNITY  PAGEANTRY 

OPEN-AIR  performances,  combining  music  and 
drama  and  spectacle,  which  have  come  to  be 
known  as  pageants,  are  of  recent  and  rapidly  grow- 
ing popularity  in  the  United  States.  To  be  sure, 
for  a  long  time  past,  springtide  dances  and  masques 
and  processions,  with  a  setting  of  campus  greenery 
and  college  halls,  have  been  annual  features  of  col- 
lege life,  especially  in  the  women's  colleges  such  as 
Vassar  and  Wellesley  and  Bryn  Mawr.  And  in 
recent  years,  too,  the  open-air  rendering  of  Greek 
and  Shakespearean  drama,  familiarized  by  such 
troupes  as  the  Ben  Greet  and  Coburn  players,  has 
been  seized  upon  by  the  colloges  as  at  once  educa- 
tional and  beautiful;  so  that  now  several  of  our  uni- 
versities possess  their  outdoor  theaters.  But  the 
pageant  proper,  while  it  has  undoubtedly  been  pre- 
pared for  and  in  a  way  introduced  by  the  colleges, 
nevertheless  has  a  character  and  source  of  its  own. 
The  real  source  of  the  pageant  and  the  real  cause 
of  its  popularity  is  the  nation-wide  dawning  of  our 
sense  of  history  and  national  individuality.  No 
doubt  the  colleges  have  shown  us  the  way.  No 
doubt,   too,   the   discovery  of   God's   outdoors,   of 

193 


194  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

which  the  screened  porch,  the  automobile  picnic,  and 
the  boy  scout  are  so  many  parallel  symptoms,  has 
given  an  added  tug  in  the  direction  which  the  cam- 
pus spectacle  indicated.  But  under  and  beyond  these 
lies  the  fact  of  an  inner  discovery,  an  inner  appetite 
— the  discovery  that  as  a  people  we  have  an  inter- 
esting history  and  that  it  is  one  containing  incidents 
that  may  be  made  to  minister  to  that  hunger  for 
idealization  which  is  the  noblest  desire  of  mankind. 

Hence  it  is  that  all  over  the  country  during  the 
past  few  years  the  historical  and  symbolical  pageant 
has  appeared  to  commemorate  the  past  and  intimate 
the  future  of  locality  and  city  and  state,  creating 
at  once  a  new  poetry  and  a  new  patriotism  not 
merely  for  the  youth  in  college,  but  for  the  whole 
community.  The  American  pageant  of  today  is  an 
expression  of  the  life  and  the  ideals  of  the  people 
as  a  whole,  each  center,  in  utilizing  its  own  nearer 
and  dearer  traditions,  contributing  its  local  share  to 
what  is  fast  becoming  a  deeper  and  truer  national 
sense  than  ever  we  have  had  before — deeper  and 
truer  because  more  consciously  and  thoughtfully 
ideal. 

The  fact  that  a  pageant  is  the  w^ork  of  a  whole 
community  is  perhaps  as  important  as  the  fact  that 
it  is  a  creative  work.  To  be  successfully  produced 
it  calls  for  administrative  and  executive  abilities 
as  well  as  for  musical,  literary,  dramatic  and  other 
arti.stic  powers.  It  demands  the  co-operation  not 
merely   of   the   committee   members   but   of   many 


COMMUNITY  PAGEANTRY  195 

whose  names  are  not  printed  on  the  bills,  people 
who  contribute  ideas,  reminiscences,  properties  in 
the  shape  of  old-time  garbs,  and  indeed  that  atmos- 
phere of  interest  without  which  the  thing  is  impos- 
sible. Money  is  required,  and  accommodating 
merchants  are  put  to  unprofitable  pains  to  secure 
just  the  goods  needed  for  this  color  effect  or  that 
appurtenance.  By  the  time  the  whole  work  is  com- 
plete a  multitude  have  had  a  share  in  it. 

No  doubt  the  size  of  the  community  interested 
somewhat  affects  the  generality  of  the  feeling  of 
participation.  Such  gigantic  affairs  as  the  St.  Louis 
pageant  or  that  given  by  the  city  of  Newark  involve 
a  large  financial  outlay  and  a  more  or  less  profes- 
sional character  in  the  preparation.  Indeed,  the 
business  of  the  "pageant  director"  has  already 
sprung  into  existence,  while  professional  poets  are 
engaged  to  compose  for  such  occasions.  At  the 
other  extreme  is  such  a  performance  as  the  Fourth 
of  July  historical  pageant  where  the  only  bill  turned 
in  to  the  Bertrand  Social  Center  club,  which 
had  the  spectacle  in  charge,  was  for  grease-paint 
for  make-up.  The  pride  of  such  small  places  is  a 
notable  factor  in  pageant  success,  which  recipro- 
cally increases  the  pride.  Where  the  pageant  does 
succeed  in  the  community  sense,  there  is  surely  a 
richer  reward  than  any  possible  financial  gain.  For 
the  art  of  pageantry  is  in  every  sense  a  popular 
art.  A  pageant  that  is  produced  by  a  community 
not  only  presents  a  pleasing  aesthetic  spectacle,  for 


196  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  enjoyment  of  all,  but  it  educates  the  native 
talent  of  the  place,  in  the  use  of  color  and  language, 
in  dramatic  acting,  in  beautiful  dancing,  in  musician- 
ship. It  makes  education  in  art  significant  to  the 
people  by  promising  an  opportunity  for  the  display 
and  exercise  of  every  natural  gift,  and  by  creating 
confidence  in  the  community's  power  to  entertain 
itself.  It  has  long  been  our  national  custom,  from 
New  York  City  to  Quimby's  Corners,  to  receive 
our  theatrical  and  musical  entertainments  with  a 
stamp  of  foreign  manufacture  and  European  ap- 
proval. The  American  pageant  promises  not  only 
to  develop  a  native  art,  but  at  the  same  time  a  native 
and  independent  sense  of  what  is  good  and  bad  i.n 
art. 

Calling  for  so  many  and  such  complex  talents 
and  appealing  not  to  a  private  purse  but  to  a  public 
interest,  the  pageant  is  not  produced  simply  and  eas- 
ily. It  demands  a  great  deal  of  gratis  interest  and 
free  work  from  a  great  number  of  persons.  A  com- 
mittee must  be  organized,  first  of  all  to  insure  the 
finances,  which  are  always  precarious  and  some- 
times at  the  mercy  of  so  uncertain  a  matter  as  the 
weather  (for  the  pageant  having  few  performances 
runs  risks  not  to  be  met  by  entertainments  that  take 
the  road).  Then  there  must  be  another  committee 
to  supervise  the  staging — building  the  scene,  train- 
ing the  performers,  etc.,  all  requiring  abilities  of  a 
very  special  order.  The  advertising  must  be  looked 
after,  and,  as  it  has  become  the  very  appropriate 


COMMUNITY  PAGEANTRY  197 

custom  to  advertise  primarily  by  means  of  an  artis- 
tic poster,  an  artist  able  to  create  this  must  be 
found.  Artistic  taste  is  called  for,  also,  in  inventing 
the  figures  of  the  dances  and  the  stage  pictures,  of 
which  a  special  phase  is  the  costuming.  Last  of 
mention,  though  its  work  falls  earliest,  is  the  sub- 
committee having  in  charge  the  book  and  music;  it 
is  their  task  to  work  out  a  controlling  idea  for  the 
piece  and  give  it  a  suitable  text  and  accompani- 
ment. 

The  subject  or  theme  of  a  pageant  is  commonly 
and  naturally  connected  with  local  history.  Hardly 
a  community  in  the  United  States,  large  or  small, 
but  possesses  plenty  of  material  in  the  way  of  past 
events  interesting  enough  and  significant  enough 
to  form  many  such  themes.  Of  course  the  older 
communities  have  the  richer  and  more  varied  past, 
and  it  is  quite  natural  that  the  first  and  most  enthusi- 
astic pageant  givers  have  been  the  towns  of  New 
England  with  their  (for  America)  old  traditions 
and  those  of  California  with  their  picturesque 
histories.  But  human  life  is  a  rich  mine  of  dramatic 
materials,  wherever  it  is  lived,  and  even  the  young 
towns  of  Nebraska  have  much  in  their  pasts  that 
only  needs  to  be  properly  expressed  to  be  found  full 
of  meaning  and  inspiration. 

For  strictly  historical  events  the  most  interesting 
form  of  presentation  is  the  dramatic.  Outdoor 
drama  is  more  difficult  to  "carry  across"  than  indoor 
stage  performances,  for  the  reason  that  the  illusion 


198  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

of  the  footlights,  stagecraft,  cannot  be  so  complete, 
and  for  the  added  reason  that  the  audience  will  be 
farther  from  the  actors  and  less  able  to  follow 
closely  their  expression.  Pageant  drama,  accord- 
ingly must  depend  as  much  as  possible  upon  the 
grouping  and  action  and  as  little  as  may  be  upon  the 
text.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  greatly  helped  by  the 
familiarity  which  the  audience  may  be  supposed 
to  possess  with  the  theme  treated — just  the  familiar- 
ity which  in  ancient  days  made  Greek  drama  pos- 
sible to  outdoor  audiences  of  many  thousands. 

But  in  addition  to  the  dramatic  scenes  allegory 
is  used.  Even  historical  materials  are  occasionally 
susceptible  of  allegorical  treatment,  or  invite  that 
exclusively,  but  usually  the  allegorical  scenes  are 
symbolical  in  character.  The  hopes  and  aspirations 
of  the  community  can  very  properly  be  represented 
in  this  fashion — such  themes  as  the  mingling  of 
races,  the  search  for  human  progress,  the  depend- 
ence of  man's  life  upon  agriculture,  all  these  and 
many  more  may  be  made  beautiful  by  poetry  and 
music,  dance  and  pantomime.  And  thus  it  is  that 
allegory  forms  the  very  appropriate  beginning  and 
end,  interlude,  too,  if  desired,  for  an  historical  piece. 

Everywhere  in  the  country  Indian  themes  have 
been  employed  in  the  pageants  presented.  Partly, 
no  doubt,  this  is  due  to  the  picturesqueness  of  the 
Indian.  Partly  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  his- 
tory of  each  community  harks  back  to  its  Indian 
days.     Partly  it  is  just  the  expression  and  badge  of 


COMMUNITY  PAGEANTRY  199 

the  instinctive  Americanism  that  inspires  the  pageant 
movement;  the  art  of  the  pageant  is  an  art  of 
America  and  it  demands  the  Indian  as  a  sign  of  its 
authenticity. 

But  there  is  a  deeper  and  finer  reason  which  is 
sure  sooner  or  later  to  come  to  the  surface  why  the 
Indian  subject  is  especially  appropriate  for  pagean- 
try. To  begin  with  the  Indian  is  a  human  being 
like  the  white  man ;  strip  off  his  beads  and  feathers 
and  get  into  his  thought  and  it  will  be  found  that 
he  thinks  and  feels,  not  perhaps  as  does  the  white 
man  in  his  workaday  apparel,  but  as  does  the  white 
man  stripped  of  weights  and  measures,  his  business 
appointments,  and  his  coins.  Human  nature  has  a 
common  fund  at  the  bottom,  which  all  men  share, 
and  the  big  part  of  this  common  fund  is  a  love  of 
the  poetry  of  that  other  and  greater  nature  into 
which  man's  life  is  made  to  fit.  Somehow  the  In- 
dian seems  to  see  this  world  nature — here  in  Amer- 
ica at  least,  perhaps  because  it  was  so  long  exclus- 
ively his  America — in  a  more  clear-eyed  fashion 
than  his  civilized  brother ;  and  so  it  is  that  his  myths 
and  legends  abound  with  the  simple  and  universal 
truths  that  appeal  to  all  men.  Coupled  with  the  pic- 
turesqueness  of  the  Indian,  this  quality  of  poetic 
truth  in  his  thought  and  imaginings  make  of  his 
tribal  lore  an  unfailing  fount  of  poetic  allegory. 

As  I  have  intimated,  the  growth  of  the  pageant 
is  a  phase  of  that  more  universal  discovery  of  out- 
door nature,   which  is  soon  to  redeem  Americans 


200  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

from  the  epithet,  never  quite  deserved,  of  "dollar 
worshipers."  The  pageant  is  capable  of  being  made 
one  of  the  great  attractions  of  the  social  life  of  the 
people,  and  if  it  be  conceived  sincerely  and  nobly  it 
can  easily  become  a  most  precious  part  of  that  social 
life.  If  we  love  beauty  in  our  surroundings,  as  all 
do,  why  should  we  not  use  every  available  means  of 
making  life  beautiful?  Surely,  the  pageant  is  such 
a  means,  and  it  is  worth  remembering  that  the  sense 
of  beauty  grows  with  cultivation,  that  just  in  so  far 
as  we  create  beautiful  things  we  increase  our  powers 
of  appreciating  beauty.  The  great  advantage  of  a 
community  art  is  that  it  educates  all  while  it  grati- 
fies all. 

The  outdoor  theater,  as  everyone  knows,  is 
Greek  in  origin.  Not  everyone  is  aware  that  the 
Greek  theater  and  drama,  and  thence  our  modern 
theater  and  opera,  grew  directly  out  of  a  type  of 
performance  identical  in  its  elements  with  the  mod- 
ern American  pageant.  Greek  drama  sprung  up  in 
a  generation  from  a  primitve  yearly  celebration  of 
the  legends  of  heroic  days  and  allegories  of  the 
gods.  Like  our  pageants,  these  were  outdoor  per- 
formances. There  were  choruses  that  sang  and 
danced ;  there  were  rhapsodes  that  recited  and  actors 
that  acted  the  deeds  of  old.  A  little  later  great 
artists  like  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles  seized  upon 
these  materials  and  produced  Greek  tragedy.  Aes- 
chylus added  a  second  actor  to  the  leader  of  the 
primitive  chorus,  says  Aristotle,  and  he  introduced 


COMMUNITY  PAGEANTRY  201 

scene-painting;  Sophocles  increased  the  number  of 
actors  to  three,  and  made  the  performance  more 
dramatic  and  less  choric.  It  was  only  after  these 
men  that  permanent  stone  theaters  were  built — built 
because  they  had  created  a  drama  demanding  a  per- 
manent stage,  and  a  literature  which  has  been  the 
model  and  inspiration  of  Europe  ever  since. 

If  ever  America  is  to  find  that  native  art  which 
has  been  so  long  hoped  for  and  so  disappointingly 
delayed,  it  will  come,  I  believe,  through  some  such 
source  as  the  pageant.  The  pageant  is  democratic, 
like  the  spirit  of  our  institutions;  it  is  kept  close  to 
the  interests  and  feelings  of  all  citizens,  while  it 
represents  those  interests  and  feelings  which  are 
least  selfish  and  most  ideal ;  it  endeavors  to  symbolize 
and  so  make  vivid  the  spirit  of  our  communities  as 
wholes ;  and  in  reclaiming  the  traditions  of  the  past 
it  is  gradually  bringing,  as  it  were,  to  the  surface  of 
our  aesthetic  consciousness  those  historical  materials 
and  ideal  themes  which  must  one  day  form  the  sub- 
stance of  a  national  art. 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE 
IV 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE 

IN  an  address  delivered  at  the  two  hundred  and 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  founding  of  Harvard, 
James  Russell  Lowell  characterized  the  aim  of  the 
college  and  the  ideal  of  its  education : 

Let  it  be  our  hope  to  make  a  gentleman  of  every  youth  who 
is  put  under  our  charge;  not  a  conventional  gentleman,  but 
a  man  of  culture,  a  man  of  intellectual  resource,  a  man  of 
public  spirit,  a  man  of  refinement,  with  that  good  taste  which 
is  the  conscience  of  the  mind,  and  that  conscience  which  is  the 
good  taste  of  the  soul.* 

Good  taste  is  the  conscience  of  the  mind.  Lowell's 
definition  is  compact  of  thought,  and  is  worth 
dwelling  upon.  Good  taste  is  a  trait  we  all  agree  in 
valuing,  though  its  meaning  is  as  a  rule  rather 
vaguely  felt;  we  urge  its  cultivation  and  admire 
its  exercise,  but  the  quality  itself  is  generally  less 
analyzed  than  desired.  Such  a  pithy  phrase  as 
Lowell's,  then,  is  a  not  unwelcome  reminder  of  a 
duty  that  we  owe  to  our  self -under  standing,  es- 
pecially when  it  is  set  up  as  an  important  factor  in 

*For  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  sources  of  Lowell's 
conception  see  Wm.  Guild  Howard,  "Good  Taste  and  Con- 
science," Publications  of  the  Modern  Language  Association 
of  America,  XXV.,  3. 

205 


206  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

our  ideal  of  educational  attainment.  What,  indeed, 
is  this  good  taste  that  we  set  such  store  by?  And 
in  what  degree  is  its  cultivation  a  proper  end  of  the 
teacher's  task?  These  are  questions  which  should 
be  considered  before  we  come  to  the  more  practical 
problems  of  ways  and  means. 

First,  then,  what  is  good  taste,  precisely  defined? 
The  term  comes  into  English,  I  doubt  not,  from  the 
French  le  bon  gout,  and  so  rests  upon  the  Latin 
gustus  for  its  ultimate.  The  term  is,  of  course,  a 
trope,  based  upon  the  physical  sensation  of  a  flavor 
upon  the  tongue ;  and  at  first  glance  the  figure  seems 
not  to  carry  us  very  far.  But  metaphors  of  this 
sort,  especially  when  deep-seated  and  long-used,  if 
narrowly  examined  will  usually  be  found  to  convey 
some  subtle  and  exacting  truth,  and  I  think  the 
similitude  of  taste  is  transferred  from  the  usage  of 
the  tongue  to  that  of  an  ideal  sensibility  not  without 
its  own  good  reason.  To  begin  with,  of  the  five 
physical  senses  that  of  taste  is  by  far  the  most  un- 
equivocally subjective  and  idiosyncratic.  'T  like" 
and  'T  dislike,"  applied  to  savors,  are  as  near  ulti- 
mates  as  any  human  judgments;  there  is  no  court 
of  appeal  from  the  tongue  and  no  law  beyond  indi- 
vidual preference.  Sensations  of  taste  are  lawless 
and  unchallengable  as  are  no  other  sensations  (as  is 
well  enough  shown  by  the  small  vocabulary  we  have 
to  express  taste  discriminations).  Now  this  same 
subjectivism,  this  same  idiosyncrasy  of  right,  and 
repugnance  to  law,  is  certainly  felt  to  hold,  in  some 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  207 

measure,  in  the  realm  of  the  more  ideal  discrimina- 
tions called  by  the  same  name  of  "taste."  The 
maxim  de  gustibus  non  est  disputandum  is  the  per- 
fect expression  of  this  feeling.  But  would  this 
maxim,  think  you,  carry  the  same  conviction  were 
it  framed  with  reference  to  vision  or  hearing,  or 
even  to  touch  or  smell,  instead  of  to  taste?  For  we 
do  assuredly  dispute  much  about  sights  and  sounds, 
touch  gives  us  the  primary  qualities  of  physical 
things,  while  odors  are  not  even  named  except  with 
reference  to  the  objects  emitting  them.  Clearly 
the  metaphor  of  taste  conveys  a  fundamental  anal- 
ogy from  the  physical  to  the  ideal. 

Nor  is  this  analogical  freight  exhausted  by  the 
mere  subjective  individuality  of  tastes.  The  sense 
of  taste  is  not  only  the  most  subjective,  it  is  also 
the  most  appetitive  of  the  senses.  Of  all  the  senses 
it  is  toned  by  the  deepest  feelings  of  desire  or  an- 
tipathy. We  hear,  see,  smell  and  touch  objects  that 
we  could  not  endure  to  taste,  and  all  in  the  nature  of 
our  daily  routine.  Language  again  bears  witness 
to  the  sense-quality,  for  when  we  wish  to  describe 
the  height  of  active  enjoyment  we  use  the  word 
gusto,  while  the  extreme  of  dislike  is  disgust.  Is 
not  this  quality  of  emotional  determination  equally 
characteristic  of  those  more  enduring  tastes  which 
express  ideal  preferences  and  give  color  to  person- 
ality? 

Thus  the  metaphor  of  taste  carries  with  it  the 
meaning  of  individual  choice,  deeply  toned  with  at- 


208  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

traction  or  aversion — a  court  of  appeal  at  once 
subjective  and  passional — which  is  regarded  as  in 
some  true  sense  the  core  of  that  other  and  higher 
taste  which  is  expressed  in  our  ideal  interests.  But 
it  would  be  to  ignore  the  proper  function  of  meta- 
phor to  believe  that  the  whole  meaning  of  this 
higher  type  of  taste  is  conveyed  by  the  physical 
analogy.  For  one  thing,  the  higher  taste  differs 
from  the  sense  of  taste  in  being  objectively  good  or 
bad — for  the  phrase  "good  taste"  means  objectively 
good — and  in  being,  therefore,  a  subject  of  judg- 
ment, and  hence,  in  some  measure,  of  law.  We  rec- 
ognize this  implicitly  when  we  speak  of  "a  person 
of  taste,"  a  phrase  we  should  never  dream  of  using 
with  reference  to  merely  gustatory  sensations.  The 
higher  taste  participates  in  idea  as  well  as  in  feeling; 
it  belongs  to  the  realm  of  mind  and  is  therefore, 
like  all  true  thought,  never  exclusively  individual, 
but  in  a  degree  social. 

All  this  is  recognized  in  Lowell's  definition. 
"Good  taste  is  the  conscience  of  the  mind."  Like 
conscience,  taste  is  inward  and  passional,  deeply  in- 
dividual and  emotional;  but  it  is  also  an  attribute  of 
"mind,"  which  in  Lowell's  intention  assuredly  refers 
to  the  realm  of  ideas  and  judgments,  to  those 
thoughts  about  things  and  actions  which  make  up 
the  domain  of  truth  and  right.  The  other  half  of 
Lowell's  description,  "that  conscience  which  is  the 
good  taste  of  the  soul,"  should  not  escape  us  here; 
for,  as  it  were  by  intonation,  it  conveys  to  us  this 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  209 

Other  fact,  that  good  taste  is  never  far  removed 
from  good  morals;  the  two  are  not  identical,  but 
they  are  inseparable  at  least  in  the  sense  that  the 
best  morality  is  harmonized  by  taste,  which  best 
morality  is  none  other  than  what  the  Greeks  would 
have  it  to  be,  a  harmony  of  the  soul.  Think  for  a 
moment  of  the  qualities  which  we  associate  with 
good  taste :  are  they  not  quietness  and  sincerity  and 
propriety,  temperance  in  all  things,  and  beyond 
these,  fineness  of  sensibility,  purity  and  truth?  and 
are  not  these  moral  qualities  ? 

Good  taste,  then,  is  partly  a  matter  of  conduct 
and  ideals;  it  is  a  part  of  morality.  Again,  it  is 
partly  a  matter  of  judgment  and  ideas,  of  learning 
and  wisdom.  In  both  of  these  particulars  it  is  sub- 
ject to  education  and  is  a  proper  care  of  schools 
and  colleges.  But  the  more  elementary  factor,  rep- 
resented by  the  term  "taste"  itself,  is  inborn,  and 
it  is  of  the  nature  of  an  instinct  and  an  appetite. 
Judgment,  wrote  Rivarol,  "has  never  sufficed  for 
the  fine  arts;  these  noble  children  of  genius  have 
required  a  lover  rather  than  a  judge,  and  this  lover 
is  the  taste,  for  judgment  contents  itself  with  ap- 
proving or  condemning,  but  the  taste  enjoys  and 
suffers."  Not  the  educated  judgment,  but  the  in- 
spired and  fired  imagination  is  the  creator  of  art; 
and  in  some  degree  this  inspiration  is  the  endow- 
ment of  all  men.  Its  nature  is  that  of  love,  and  the 
object  of  its  love  is  beauty.  Love  of  beauty  gave 
order  to  the  kingdom  of  the  gods,  said  Plato,  mean- 


210  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

ing  the  world  of  nature;  and  it  is  not  strange  that 
human  nature  should  respond  to  the  world's  beauty 
with  some  spark  of  the  natal  divinity.  The  task  of 
the  teacher  is  first  to  realize  what  is, this  love  of 
beauty,  to  see  that  it  be  not  turned  nor  staled  by 
friendlessness.  With  this  beginning,  which  nature 
has  made  generously  ours,  we  may  pass  on  to  that 
development  of  the  perfected  taste  which  comes 
with  the  proper  cultivation  of  character  and  judg- 
ment. For  more  than  any  other  trait  which  it  falls 
to  the  teacher  to  foster,  good  taste  partakes  of  the 
whole  circle  of  human  endowment. 

In  the  bit  of  psychology  which  I  have  just  under- 
taken my  aim  has  been  to  indicate  the  character  and 
place  of  taste  in  the  inner  organization  of  life.  I 
have  pointed  out  that  it  is  a  trait  which  touches 
both  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  sides  of  char- 
acter, and  that  it  is  developed  through  intellectual 
and  moral  training;  but  that  for  its  development  it 
demands  that  predisposing  love  of  beauty  which  is 
its  vital  essence  and  the  sanction  of  its  expression. 
I  would  now  view  the  same  matter  from  the  more 
objective  angle  of  what  we  philosophers  call  theory 
of  values. 

Now  values,  in  the  broad  sense,  are  appraisements 
in  terms  of  "good"  and  "bad."  The  application  of 
these  terms  varies  in  intention  with  the  human  in- 
terest involved,  but  man  is  not  so  hopelessly  com- 
plex that  his  interests  are  beyond  classification.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  classification  is  fairly  simple. 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  211 

There  are  the  practical  interests  of  life,  whose 
values  are  measured  by  efficiency,  that  is,  by  eco- 
nomic adaptation  of  energy  to  end ;  it  is  in  this  sense 
that  we  speak  of  a  hammer  or  an  apple  as  a  "good" 
or  a  "bad"  hammer  or  apple.  There  are  the  moral 
interests  of  life,  whose  values  are  put  in  terms  of 
virtue  and  righteousness;  the  "good  man"  is  the 
virtuous  man.  There  are  the  intellectual  interests 
of  life,  represented  especially  by  science  and  love  of 
knowledge,  and  here  the  valuations  are  in  terms  of 
truth  and  error;  the  good  argument  or  solution  is 
the  true  argument  or  solution;  science  knows  no 
value  save  true  and  false.  Finally,  there  are  the 
aesthetic  interests  of  life,  whose  goodness  is  beauty 
and  whose  badness  is  ugliness;  a  sonata,  a  lyric,  a 
landscape  is  good  or  bad  according  as  it  is  beautiful 
or  ugly,  and  there  is  no  other  measure. 

It  is  not  unusual  to  find  the  moral,  intellectual  and 
aesthetic  interests  grouped  together  as  "ideal"  in- 
terests in  distinction  from  the  material  and  practical 
interests  of  the  economic  and  bionomic  world.  But 
if  we  examine  them  carefully  we  find  that  a  truer 
classification  throws  the  moral  and  intellectual  inter- 
ests into  a  middle  group,  between  the  practical  and 
the  aesthetic.  For  it  is  of  the  nature  of  the  prac- 
tical interests  that  they  find  their  end  in  employment 
and  the  production  of  change,  while  it  is  of  the 
nature  of  aesthetic  interests  that  they  find  their  end 
in  contemplation  and  the  preservation  of  beauty; 
employment  and  contemplation,   work  and  enjoy- 


212  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

ment,  these  are  the  two  poles  of  man's  experience, 
each  in  its  place  perfectly  typified  by  the  practical 
and  aesthetic  interests  of  life.  The  moral  and  the 
intellectual  partake  of  both  poles;  for  morality  is 
both  a  means  and  an  end — a  means  in  that  it  is 
what  makes  human  co-operation  and  hence  the  social 
efficiency  of  mankind  possible,  and  an  end  in  that  it 
reacts  to  create  human  characters  which  are  objects 
of  contemplation,  and  beautiful  or  ugly  in  them- 
selves. Knowledge,  too,  which  is  the  end  of  intel- 
lectual interest,  is  also  both  means  and  end,  touch- 
ing at  once  the  practical  and  the  aesthetic;  we  have 
applied  science  and  theoretic,  the  one  existing  for 
the  practice  of  life,  the  other  for  the  mind's  con- 
templation; if  we  accept  the  teachings  of  the  prag- 
matic philosophers  (and  some  of  us  lean  that  way), 
truth  itself  gets  its  goodness  from  its  applications 
to  working  interests;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
can  hardly  differ  from  Poincare  in  his  judgment 
that  the  internal  harmony  of  the  world,  which  it  is 
the  slow  labor  of  science  to  discover,  is  the  sole  and 
veritable  reality  and  the  source  of  all  beauty.  Each 
in  its  way,  the  perfected  human  life  and  the  per- 
fected science  are  works  of  art,  though  the  path  to 
perfection  is  for  each  the  path  of  daily  toil. 

If  you  assent  to  my  analysis  you  will  see  that  it 
re-enforces,  from  the  philosophical  side,  what  has 
been  indicated  by  the  psychological  analysis  of  taste. 
There  the  love  of  beauty  was  made  the  source  of 
taste ;  here  the  experience  of  beauty  is  made  its  end, 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  213 

and  it  is  an  end  which  gathers  into  itself  the  ends 
of  all  the  other  interests  of  life — the  practical,  in- 
tellectual and  moral,  for  each  of  them  serves  its  end 
only  in  so  far  as  it  makes  possible  the  creation  and 
contemplation  of  beauty. 

Volumes  might  be  written  in  illustration  of  what 
I  have  said,  for  the  whole  history  and  genius  of 
mankind  set  it  forth.  Here  I  must  be  content  with 
a  few  hints,  drawn  from  man's  long  experience. 
First  I  would  speak  of  philosophy,  which  represents 
man's  maturest  reflection  upon  his  own  condition. 
No  student  of  its  history  can  fail  to  be  impressed  by 
the  constant  recurrence  of  the  conception  of  the  con- 
templation of  beauty  as  the  final  good  and  the  suf- 
ficient reason  of  all  things:  Plato,  Aristotle,  Au- 
gustine, Aquinas,  Bruno,  Spinoza,  Berkeley,  all 
these  bear  witness  to  that  truth  which  Poincare  has 
so  nobly  expressed,  that  the  harmony  of  the  world 
is  the  sole  objective  reality  and  the  source  of  all 
beauty.  To  the  philosophers  I  should  add  the  testi- 
mony of  the  philosophic  poets,  above  all  Dante  and 
Milton,  for  whom  again  reverent  contemplation  is 
the  essence  of  beatitude.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to 
draw  evidence  alone  from  men's  written  expres- 
sion. What  human  fact  is  more  poignantly  indica- 
tive of  the  values  that  endure  than  the  price  we  set 
upon  the  potsherds  of  antiquity?  A  broken  ala- 
baster from  Egypt,  a  shattered  urn  from  Greece — 
cast  in  the  dump  in  its  own  day,  treasure-trove  in 
ours.     What  care  is  to  us  that  Egypt  of  old  was 


214  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  world's  granary,  that  Babylon  ruled  the  world's 
commerce,  Rome  its  politics,  save  that  these  facts  made 
possible  for  us  the  carven  stone,  the  modeled  tile, 
the  inscribed  parchment  which  bear  to  us  out  of  the 
past  some  record  of  human  idealization,  some  image 
of  humanly  created  beauty?  There  is  a  steatite  vase 
found  in  Phsestos  in  Crete  carved  in  relief  with  a 
procession  of  moving  men,  all  vibrant  with  life. 
Originally  the  vase  was  covered  with  gold  leaf, 
stripped  from  its  surface  by  some  barbarian  who 
cast  the  stone  to  the  refuse  heap.  To-day  not  thrice 
its  weight  in  gold  could  buy  the  rejected  stone,  with 
its  eternal  image  of  human  genius.  In  the  alembic 
of  the  centuries  the  real  goods  of  human  life  are 
refined  out,  and  they  are  not  found  to  be  the  eco- 
nomic and  political  goods  which  loom  so  big  to  the 
near  attention;  rather,  they  are  the  idealizations  of 
human  genius,  dearer  than  life  itself,  for  they  ex- 
press all  that  is  nobly  enduring  in  life.  In  every 
generation  there  are  barbarians,  quick  to  destroy; 
but  the  shudder  of  horror  which  caught  the  civilized 
world  with  the  mutilation  of  Rheims  reveals  to  us, 
I  trust,  the  final  judgment  which  time  will  set  upon 
all  men  who  see  only  the  near  advantage,  never 
the  world's  good. 

In  what  has  preceded  I  have  tried  to  show  some- 
thing of  the  psychological  character  of  taste  and 
something  of  its  philosophical  object.  Psychologi- 
cally, it  is  a  form  of  valuation,  at  once  intellectual 
and  emotional — a  conscience  of  the  mind,  as  Lowell 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  215 

phrases  it.  Philosophically,  it  is  a  judgment  of  value 
which  measures  other  values,  for  the  reason  that  of 
all  types  of  valuation  its  ends  are  more  purely  ends, 
complete  in  themselves.  If  this  analysis  is  correct, 
it  is  plain  that  good  taste  is  essential  to  the  highest 
sanity  and  the  mark  of  true  cultivation.  It  is  also 
plain  that  it  is  the  first  duty  of  the  teacher  to  train 
the  taste,  in  so  far  as  may  be,  for  the  reason  that  no 
other  form  of  judgment  can  be  proportionate  with- 
out a  cultivated  taste.  We  must  ask,  then,  how  far 
taste  is  inborn,  a  natural  endowment,  and  how  far 
it  is  subject  to  development  through  education. 

Certain  facts  are  at  once  clear.  If  good  taste  has 
the  qualities  which  I  mentioned  a  while  back,  name- 
ly, quietness  and  sincerity  and  propriety,  temper- 
ance, purity  and  truth,  it  is  evident  that  a  moral 
training  of  these  traits  will  also  be  conducive  to  the 
development  of  taste,  while  a  want  of  such  moral 
training  will  hinder  the  development  of  taste. 
Lowell's  antithetical  phrase,  "conscience  is  the  good 
taste  of  the  soul,"  is  the  summary  of  this  truth. 
Moral  training  of  some  sort  there  always  is  in 
human  society,  yet  I  cannot  but  think  that  in  our 
own  day  the  teaching  of  morals  is  on  a  rather  low 
plane  of  mind ;  we  seem  to  fear  the  stiff  structure  of 
its  general  principles,  seeking  to  shape  conduct  by 
easy  persuasion  rather  than  by  rigor  of  reason.  In 
so  far,  the  result  is  mere  flabbiness,  for  it  tends  to 
make  our  morality  unconscious  rather  than  con- 
trolled and  deliberate ;  and  it  is  ruinous  to  the  taste, 


216  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

since  here  the  moral  quahty  shows  itself  in  connec- 
tion with  mind,  illumined  with  the  light  of  reason. 

Again  in  the  field  of  the  practical  life.  Educa- 
tional propagandas  nowadays  are  forever  emphasiz- 
ing the  importance  of  the  vocation,  the  calling. 
But  no  aim  beyond  the  vocation  is  given  and  no 
measure  of  values  save  the  empty  enumeration  of 
dollars  and  cents.  Unquestionably  the  ability  and 
willingness  to  work  effectively  are  essential  to  the 
well-ordered  life;  therefore  to  excellence  of  judg- 
ment and  soundness  of  taste.  But  we  shall  never  in 
this  world  become  as  a  people  possessors  of  a  culti- 
vated sense  of  beauty  until  our  youth  is  taught  that 
work  is  but  a  means  to  an  end,  that  gold  unaccom- 
panied by  taste  is  but  the  advertisement  of  vul- 
garity, and  that  dollars  have  no  good  meaning  save 
as  symbols  of  the  energy  that  can  be  devoted  to  the 
beautification  of  the  world.  Education  is  always  a 
cost  borne  by  an  elder  generation  for  the  sake  of  the 
younger,  and  what  the  elder  generation  is  willing  to 
pay  for,  in  the  way  of  education,  is  the  fair  measure 
of  what  it  really  believes  in;  all  other  faiths  are  lip- 
service.  Judged  by  this  standard  dollar-knowledge 
is  the  beau  ideal  of  the  parents  of  this  generation, 
to  their  own  spiritual  damnation  and  the  grievous 
hurt  of  their  children. 

The  perniciousness  of  the  money-standard,  which 
is  strictly  a  purely  arithmetical  standard,  in  fields  not 
primarily  economic  is  illustrated  in  the  credit-sys- 
tem, with  its  numbered  grades,  hours  and  courses, 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  217 

which  is  made  the  measure  of  education  in  our  high 
schools  and  colleges.  Instead  of  an  ideal  of  mental 
attainment,  there  is  set  up  to  our  youth  an  ideal  of 
numerical  balances.  The  manner  of  securing  these 
becomes  of  slight  importance;  branches  of  learning 
are  measured  quantitatively — so  many  hours  of 
"chem."  equal  to  so  many  hours  of  "policon.,"  etc. ; 
and  all  standards  are  blown  to  the  winds.  The  con- 
sequence is  that  we  have  the  quite  absurd  spectacle 
of  young  people  "sliding  through  courses,"  as  they 
put  it,  in  naive  unconsciousness  of  the  fact  that  they 
are  cheating  themselves,  their  parents  and  the  state, 
when  they  think  that  they  are  cheating  their  in- 
structors! Obviously,  such  an  educational  method 
is  ruinous  to  sincerity  and  reason  alike,  and  so  is 
ruinous  to  the  development  of  all  true  taste. 

But,  you  will  be  asking,  what  of  the  direct  cultiva- 
tion of  the  taste?  what  of  instruction  in  art?  Since 
I  am  in  a  querulous  mood,  pointing  hindrances 
rather  than  helps,  I  would  indicate  a  certain  defect 
of  this  instruction,  as  we  have  it  to-day,  before  pro- 
ceeding to  what  I  regard  as  its  truer  form.  I  do 
not  know  that  I  can  better  characterize  this  defect 
than  by  naming  it  a  preference  for  the  artificial 
rather  than  the  artistic.  My  meaning  is  that  we  take 
our  pleasure  in  artifice,  and  hence  in  appearance, 
rather  than  in  the  essence  of  beauty.  Illustrations 
are  numerous  enough — any  film  theater  will  supply 
them  (though  I  do  not  wish  you  to  understand  me 
as  condemning  the  moving  picture  as  a  device;  good 


218  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

taste  can  reform  even  that).  A  still  more  danger- 
ous and  subtle  form  is  the  prevalence  of  the  notion 
that  knowledge  of  art  is  a  sort  of  high-toned  gossip. 
This  appears  in  polite  chat,  in  journalistic  reports 
of  artist's  doings,  in  lectures,  and  worst  of  all  in  col- 
lege and  grade  school  teaching.  The  impression  is 
conveyed  that  one  is  "up  on  art"  when  one  is  able  to 
speak  cursorily  of  this  musician's  engagements  or 
that  one's  bad  temper,  or  knowingly  in  a  picture  gal- 
lery of  this  as  a  "Childe  Hassam"  or  that  as  "a 
Blashfield."  I  know  of  no  worse  bore  in  the  world 
than  the  person  who  is  "up  on  art,"  and  I  know 
of  no  more  pathetic  waste  of  effort  than  the  process 
of  "getting  one's  self  up"  in  this  accomplishment — 
excepting  only  those  school  courses  which  teach  the 
youth  everything  about  literature  excepting  the  ideas 
expressed  in  it.  The  truth  is  that  this  type  of  sham 
learning  is  born  of  pure  laziness;  for  like  all  other 
things  that  are  worth  while,  knowledge  of  beauty 
comes  only  as  a  consequence  of  hard  work.  If  we 
prized  the  thing,  we  should  not  begrudge  the  work ; 
but  it  is  not  the  knowledge  we  care  for,  but  only 
the  reputation  of  knowledge,  and  so  it  is  that  we 
pursue  the  short  cut  that  leads  only  to  sham  and 
fatuity. 

Am  I  not  already,  in  describing  the  defects  of  our 
education,  intimating  the  true  cultivation  of  taste? 
"Familiarity  with  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and 
said"  is  Matthew  Arnold's  description  of  the  road 
to  culture.     Familiarity  implies  an  intimacy  that  is 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  219 

beyond  verbal  expression,  an  intimacy  that  is  a 
part  of  life,  as  family  relations  are  a  part  of  life, 
and  that  is  founded  on  love,  as  family  relations 
should  be  founded  on  love.  Familiarity  with  beauty 
means  that  its  form  and  expression  are  absorbed 
into  character  itself,  becoming  an  inward  and  indis- 
cerptible  trait.  A  truly  cultivated  taste  must  be 
based  upon  such  familiarity — at  once  a  love  and  a 
labor  of  love — with  the  beauties  of  the  world,  of 
nature  and  of  human  nature. 

How  is  it  to  be  attained?  Guidance  and  encour- 
agement are  surely  all  that  are  necessary.  All  man- 
kind, I  have  said,  are  endowed  with  the  love  of 
beauty;  it  is  as  much  a  part  of  us  as  are  eyes  and 
ears.  If  this  spontaneous  love  be  met  with  intelli- 
gent sympathy,  it  will  inevitably  find  its  goal;  if  it  be 
ignored  or  rebuffed,  it  will  suffer  death  or  perver- 
sion. The  teacher  who  would  inspire  the  love  of 
beauty  must  be  possessed  of  the  love  of  beauty  and 
must  be  also  the  familiar  of  its  truest  expression. 
In  addition  such  a  teacher  must  also  have  a  philos- 
ophy of  life  that  sets  the  values  of  our  various  activ- 
ities in  their  proper  perspective,  and  that  is  suscep- 
tible of  clear  expression.  In  a  day  such  as  ours, 
when  the  best  in  literature,  in  music  and  in  pictures 
is  everywhere  available,  there  is  small  excuse  for 
lack  of  familiarity  with  the  artistic  expression  of 
beauty — and  I  mean  by  this,  familiarity  through  the 
whole  mind  and  soul,  intellect  and  conscience  alike. 

Further,  there  is  the  beauty  of  nature,  God-given 


220  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

to  all  men.  Each  human  being  is  an  instrument 
capable  of  many  and  delicate  adjustments  to  the  en- 
vironing universe.  No  more  subtle  task  falls  to 
the  teacher  than  the  seeing  that  these  instruments 
be  brought  into  proper  focus  with  nature,  for  the 
perfect  definition  of  her  beauties.  The  task  is  not 
a  difficult  one  if  we  start  with  children — always 
eager  of  the  grand  adventure — and  its  magic  is  to 
be  found  in  suggestion,  which,  springing  from  a 
spontaneous  insight  into  beauty,  arouses  its  response 
as  spontaneously  as  love  calls  to  love. 

In  conclusion,  I  would  speak  once  more  of  the 
philosophy  of  life — where,  indeed,  is  the  crux  of 
the  whole  matter.  The  late  Nathaniel  Shaler 
pointed  out  that  in  the  biological  world  there  are 
whole  evolutions  that  have  no  other  explanations 
save  the  aesthetic.  Forms  of  life  arise  and  develop 
through  eons  toward  some  type  of  perfection  which 
serves  no  end  except  the  expression  of  beauty.  The 
crinoids,  the  lilies  of  the  sea,  are  such  a  form,  he 
says;  for  millions  of  years  they  flourished  and  de- 
veloped, and  finally  died,  crowned  with  perfect 
beauty.  Shaler  might  also  have  mentioned  the 
cephalopods,  which,  starting  with  the  cigar-shaped 
orthoceratite,  far  back  in  the  Silurian,  culminate  in 
the  fairy-like  "chambered  nautilus,"  surely  the  most 
beautiful  of  shell-life  forms.  Indeed,  does  not 
every  flower  or  beautiful  bird  illustrate  the  same 
truth — no  utility,  no  mere  life-preservation  value, 
is   sufficient   to    account    for    such   loveliness — any 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  221 

more  than  utility  can  account  for  the  loveHness  of 
a  sunset.  It  is  nature  herself  bent  upon  the  crea- 
tion of  beauty,  as  her  own  sufficient  end. 

And  is  this  anywhere  more  wonderfully  shown 
than  in  the  creation  and  fostering  of  the  love  of 
beauty  in  human  nature?  Nature  has  created 
beauty,  and  she  has  created  us  with  the  love  of 
beauty;  this  is  one  of  the  ultimate  facts  of  the  uni- 
^erse;  and  I,  for  one,  am  heartily  in  sympathy  with 
those  philosophers  who  have  found  in  this  fact  a 
reason  for  reverencing  nature  and  in  having  faith 
that  her  revelation  of  beauty  is  of  deep  and  material 
significance  for  us.  It  is  nobly  expressed  by 
Longinus^ : 

Nature  determined  man  to  be  no  low  or  ignoble  animal ; 
but  introducing  us  into  life  and  this  entire  universe  as  into 
some  vast  assemblage,  to  be  spectators,  in  a  sort,  of  her  con- 
tests, and  most  ardent  competitors  therein,  did  then  implant 
in  our  souls  an  invincible  and  eternal  love  of  that  which  is 
great  and,  by  our  own  standards,  more  divine.  Therefore 
it  is,  that  for  the  speculation  and  thought  which  are  within 
the  scope  of  human  endeavor  not  all  the  universe  together  is 
sufficient,  our  conceptions  often  pass  beyond  the  bounds  which 
limit  it;  and  if  one  were  to  look  upon  life  all  round,  and  see 
how  in  all  things  the  extraordinary,  the  great,  the  beautiful, 
stand  supreme,  he  will  at  once  know  for  what  ends  we  have 
been  born. 

In  the  order  of  creation  beauty  is  in  nature  be- 
fore it  is  in  art.  In  the  order  of  education  love  of 
beauty  in  art  grows  with  love  of  beauty  in  nature. 
This  is  no  argument  for  a  shallow  realism;  for  the 

''Prickard's  translation. 


222  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

true  color  of  nature  is  deep  and  abiding  and  of  the 
kinship  of  truth.  But  it  is  an  argument  for  a  cer- 
tain simple  and  frank  reverence  for  the  charm  that 
the  seeker  will  always  find  about  him,  in  daily  things 
— in  flowers  and  bees  and  birds,  in  the  turn  of  a 
child's  cheek  or  the  smile  on  its  mother's  lips,  in  the 
magic  of  the  summer's  green,  the  austerity  of  win- 
ter's snows,  in  the  heroic  deaths  of  men  who  love 
justice  and  temperance  and  truth.  It  is  an  argu- 
ment for  a  value  that  is  at  once  elemental  and 
supreme  in  human  affairs,  which  God  has  placed 
freely  within  the  hands  of  all  and  made  difficult  only 
to  those  who  will  not  seek  it.  In  praise  of  the  love 
of  beauty  I  have  quoted  from  great  philosophers, 
sages  of  the  historic  world;  but  lest  you  think  that 
to  them  only  can  be  given  this  treasure  which  is 
above  all  treasures,  I  would  quote  at  the  last  a 
prayer  of  the  Navaho'' — dwellers  in  hogans,  readers 
of  no  book  save  Nature's,  but  men  who  have  read 
Nature's  book  even  to  her  essential  truth. 

In  Tsegihi, 

In  the  house  made  of  dawn, 

In  the  house  made  of  evening  twilight, 

In  the  house  made  of  dark  cloud, 

In  the  house  made  of  rain  and  mist  and  pollen, 

Where  the  dark  mist  curtains  the  doorway 

The  path  to  which  is  on  the  rainbow. 

Where  the  zigzag  lightning  stands  high  on  top  .    .    . 

Oh,  male  divinity! 

'Abridged  from  the  version  published  by  Washington  Mat- 
thews, "Navaho  Legends,"  Memoirs  of  the  American  Folk- 
lore Society,  Vol.  V.  (1897). 


EDUCATION  IN  TASTE  223 

With  your  moccasins  of  dark  cloud,  come  to  us, 

With  your  leggings  and  shirt  and  head-dress  of  dark  cloud, 

come  to  us, 
With  your  mind  enveloped  in  dark  cloud,  come  to  us, 
With  the  dark  thunder  above  you,  come  to  us  soaring, 
With  the  shapen  cloud  at  your  feet,  come  to  us  soaring,  .  .  . 
With  the  far  darkness  made  of  the  rlin  and  the  mist  over 

your  head,  come  to  us  soaring. 
With  the  zigzag  lightning  flung  out  on  high  over  your  head. 
With  the  rainbow  hanging  high  over  your  head,  come  to  us 

soaring, 
With  the  far  darkness  made  of  the  dark  cloud  on  the  ends  of 

your  wings,  come  to  us  soaring !  .  .  . 
Happily  may  fair  white  corn,  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  come 

with  you. 
Happily  may  fair  yellow  corn,  fair  blue  corn,  fair  corn  of  all 

kinds,  goods  of  all  kinds,  jewels  of  all  kinds,  come  with 

you  .  .  . 
Happily  the  old  men  will  regard  you, 
Happily  the  old  women  will  regard  you, 
The  young  men  and  the  young  women  will  regard  you, 
The  children  will  regard  you, 
The  chiefs  will  regard  you. 

Happily,  as  they  approach  their  homes,  they  will  regard  you : 
May  their  roads  home  be  on  the  trail  of  peace! 
In  beautj'^  I  walk, 
With  beauty  before  me  I  walk, 
With  beauty  behind  me  I  walk. 
With  beauty  above  and  about  me  I  walk. 
It  is  finished  in  beauty, 
It  is  finished  in  beauty! 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY 
THREE  PAPERS  OF  THE  HOUR 


I 

THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  INTELLECTUALS 

THE  outbreak  of  the  war  in  1914  was  a  triumph 
for  miHtarism  in  European  civihzation:  that 
all  men  know.  But  all  men  do  not  see  with  the 
same  eyes  what  were  the  forces  leading  to  interna- 
tionalism over  which  this  militarism  triumphed.  It 
triumphed  over  the  frail  barriers  of  European  di- 
plomacy and  the  weak  fortifications  of  international 
law,  symbolized  by  The  Hague — but  who  expected 
these  to  hold  against  a  will  to  power  ?  It  triumphed 
over  the  economic  bonds  of  industry  and  trade, 
whose  symbol  is  banks  and  gold — but  surely  it  is  a 
fatuous  estimate  of  the  human  soul  which  rests  its 
hope  for  peace  upon  its  love  of  gain.  It  triumphed 
over  the  communion  of  religion,  symbolized  by  ec- 
clesiastical Rome — but  when  has  the  Church  kept 
Christians  from  one  another's  throats?  All  these 
forces  were  discounted  by  the  wise — slender  reeds 
of  support! — but  there  were  still  two  elements  of 
cohesion  upon  which  men  less  consciously,  but  more 
convincedly,  relied  for  the  preservation  of  the  in- 
tegrity and  sanity  of  the  civilization  of  Europe,  and 
it  was  the  failure  of  these  two  that  made  the  bit- 
terest disillusionments  of  the  earlier  hours  of  the 
war. 

227 


228  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

The  first  of  these  was  the  spirit  of  the  Interna- 
tional Workingmen's  Association.  Labor  has  al- 
ways been  the  least  articulate  of  the  great  forces  in 
society ;  but  in  recent  years  it  had  formulated  a  faith 
in  the  fraternal  relationship  of  the  inarticulate 
masses  of  all  countries  vividly  enough  to  impress 
the  world  with  its  reality  and  strength.  It  was  a 
prime  article  of  this  faith  that  the  masses  of  the 
different  nations  would  not  (at  the  command  of  the 
classes)  slay  one  another;  and  even  while  bourgeois 
and  aristocrat  ridiculed,  a  dim  reliance  was  placed 
upon  this  profession.  Nay,  it  is  more  than  prob- 
able that  a  moving  cause  of  the  war  was  the  de- 
termination of  militaristic  oligarchs  to  kill  this  pro- 
fession before  it  should  have  gained  such  conscious 
definition  as  to  rob  them  of  their  power;  in  other 
words,  the  pacifism  of  the  International  and  its  so- 
cialistic offshoots  was  an  actual  cause  of  the  war. 
The  event  shows  that  the  militarists  were  too  late, 
at  least  in  Russia,  to  save  themselves,  although  they 
were  timely  enough  so  far  as  ruining  the  world  was 
concerned.  Possibly  the  spirit  of  the  International 
may  yet  assert  itself  redemptively — if  first  it  gain 
articulation  and  discover  within  itself  something  of 
that  generosity  and  nobility  without  which  no  faith 
can  redeem. 

But  if  the  spirit  of  the  International  was  the  least 
articulate,  that  of  the  intellectuals  was  the  most 
articulate  of  the  great  professions  of  European  cul- 
ture.    It  is  the  very  business  of  art  and  science  and 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  229 

scholarship  to  express  themselves,  and  to  an  inter- 
national audience  and  for  an  international  under- 
standing; and  there  was  no  solidarity  of  Western 
civilization  so  pretentious  as  that  of  its  intellectual- 
ism.  When  the  leaders  (for  the  intellectuals  pro- 
claimed themselves  leaders)  of  all  the  great  nations 
were  masters  and  pupils  to  one  another,  how  could 
there  be — so  it  was  imagined — a  disruption  of  so 
bonded  a  unity?  So  seated  was  the  delusion  that 
months  after  the  war  had  bloodily  blotted  out  all 
other  interchanges,  doctors  and  publicists  were  still 
sending  manifestoes  across  frontiers,  passing  from 
justification  to  repudiation  and  finally  recrimination 
and  hatred,  in  the  wordy  battles  that  seemed  sud- 
denly so  remote  from  men's  affairs.  One  of  the 
very  earliest  of  these  manifestoes  was  the  utterance 
of  the  ninety-three  German  professors  sent  out  to 
neutrals;  and  it  was  also  the  most  damning  of  all 
to  the  pretensions  of  intellectualism. 

For  from  the  very  first  it  was  abundantly  evident 
that  the  intellectuals — naturalists  and  historians 
and  all — were  merely  the  propagandists  of  a  nar- 
row nationalism.  The  high  communion  of  art  and 
scholarship  and  the  admirable  edifice  of  science 
which  were  the  creations  of  the  concerted  devotion 
of  many  lives  in  many  lands,  and  which  were  sup- 
posed and  indeed  felt  by  their  devotees  to  be  the 
symbols  of  a  spiritual  unity  and  fellowship,  sud- 
denly, under  the  strain  of  the  partisan  ambitions  of 
a  class  whom  the  intellectuals  thought  themselves 


230  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

to  hold  in  contempt,  fell  vacantly  asunder — and  in 
a  moment  the  mind  of  Europe  was  shown  to  be 
hollow  and  void  of  all  spiritual  substance. 

In  the  hour  of  strenuous  physical  conflict  the  full 
significance  of  this  collapse  cannot  be  realized;  but 
in  the  long  run  it  will  assuredly  be  found  to  be  the 
most  vital  blow  which  the  war  has  inflicted  upon  the 
modernism  of  the  Western  world.  There  was 
nothing  so  distinctive  of  this  modernism  as  the 
achievement  of  its  intellectuals;  this  was  our  pet 
and  pride,  the  show  baby  of  our  civilization.  We 
had  come,  too,  to  regard  it  as  our  salvation  and  as 
embodying  the  whole  grace  and  illumination  of 
life.  To  see  a  thing  so  idealized  distorted  to  gro- 
tesque abuse,  and  what  had  been  proclaimed  the 
saviour  of  humanity  made  the  slave  of  man's  cor- 
ruption, this  can  end  only  in  shock  and  revulsion 
and  the  gall  of  a  bitter  denial.  It  is  therefore  of 
high  moment — lest  we  not  utterly  destroy  in  too 
greatly  condemning — that  we  see  the  intellectual- 
istic  idol  in  its  unfurbished  truth,  that  we  may  dis- 
cover its  defects  in  season. 

For  there  is  a  desirable  salvage.  I  never  read 
the  "Meditations"  of  Rene  Descartes — who  is  with 
an  especial  right  the  master  of  the  moderns — with- 
out a  renewed  reverence  not  only  for  a  man  of  such 
simple  and  conscientious  honesty,  but  also  for  the 
truth  itself.  And  I  find  in  his  immediate  succes- 
sors, in  Spinoza  the  Jew,  Locke  the  Englishman, 
Leibnitz  the  German,  the  continuation  of  that  same 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  231 

austere  and  inspiring  truthfulness.  But  if — not 
led  by  the  gradations  of  illusion  to  which  surrender 
is  so  easy  when  one  follows  step  by  step — if  a  leap 
be  made  from  the  beginnings  to  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, how  unspeakable  is  the  descent!  Philosophy 
becomes  confused  with  its  own  cunning  and  de- 
luded with  its  own  shows,  and  at  the  end  we  have 
such  embodied  bombast  as  Herbert  Spencer  and 
such  theatric  lying  as  Ernst  Haeckel  dominating 
economics  and  politics  and  religion  with  their  bio- 
logical spells  and  materialistic  incantations.  Love 
of  truth  is  lipped  and  praise  of  the  spirit  mouthed, 
but  everywhere  reason  is  made  the  apologist  of 
prejudice  and  science  the  pander  of  appetite. 

Consider  for  a  moment  the  dogmas  and  tenets  of 
the  intellectuals.  Foremost  is  naturalism,  every- 
where, in  art  and  science  and  religion,  fuming  about 
realities  and  meaning  sensation,  and  undertaking 
such  monstrosities  as  the  creation  of  a  rational 
faith — an  artificial  religion!  With  this,  and  un- 
doubtedly as  a  conceit  growing  out  of  the  invention 
of  machines,  is  the  conviction  of  human  self-suffi- 
ciency: the  dignity  of  man,  the  rights  of  man,  the 
prowess  of  man,  the  idolatry  of  man — and  of 
woman.  The  two,  compounded  under  the  blessed 
name  "evolution,"  unite  into  a  fatuous  dogma  of 
progress,  which  is  really  only  the  fatalistic  optimism 
of  the  irresponsible — like  the  chirping  of  crickets 
in  Indian  summer.  That  the  Paradise  of  such  a 
confession  should  be  the  materialistic  bliss  of   fat 


232  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

meals  and  gaudy  apparel,  and  that  its  ethics  should 
resolve  first  into  a  consolation  of  vanity  and  thence 
into  the  cynical  acceptance  of  the  right  of  might  is 
the  sure  efl'ect  of  the  drugging — as  inevitable  as 
the  winter  which  ends  the  insect  chorus. 

The  truth  is,  modernism  suffers  from  a  horrible 
vivisection  of  the  soul,  and  its  paeans  to  the  intellect 
have  been  but  praise  of  its  own  deformity.  A  soul 
which  consists  of  mere  intellect,  with  faith  and  hope 
and  charity  sheared  away,  is  as  helpless  as  a  pigeon 
without  its  cerebellum;  all  steersmanship  is  gone, 
and  its  ideas  are  but  empty  ghosts  twittering  in  a 
vacuum,  ready  to  rush  in  a  huddle  at  the  first  sacri- 
fice offered,  there  to  lap  up  the  red  blood.  When 
in  the  modern  world  material  enterprise  set  up  the 
altars  and,  with  capital  jangling  the  castanets,  pol- 
itics prepared  the  offering,  all  the  ghosts  of  science, 
art,  and  theology  flew  to  the  rites — seeking  an  in- 
terest, seeking  a  purpose,  seeking  a  confession  which 
might  give  them  life  and  substance.  The  church 
talked  social  service  and  became  a  promoter  of  so- 
cial clubs ;  art  talked  devotion  to  beauty  and  became 
a  purveyor  to  mean  appetites;  science  posed  as  the 
physician  of  human  nature  and  concocted  smooth 
formularies  justifying  the  iniquities  of  the  strong. 
The  upper  classes  everywhere  sank  back  into  a  kind 
of  mawkish  paganism,  of  which  the  most  disheart- 
ening symbol  is  modern  "higher  education,"  huck- 
stering off  to  capital  the  various  brands  of  brains 
which  it  models  to  capital's  use,  and  pointing  with 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  233 

a  vapid  piety  to  the  pillared  porticos  which  capital 
rears  for  it — as  if,  by  restoring  the  sacred  precincts, 
Olympian  Zeus  could  be  made  to  live  again. 

It  is  sm.all  wonder  that  in  this  showy  ritual  labor 
has  deemed  itself  to  be  the  sacrifice — "the  goat,"  as 
we  say.  And  it  is  small  wonder — though  thrice  a 
pity — that,  inarticulate  and  unled,  it  has  made  itself 
greedy  of  the  unnatural  feasts  of  politics  and  capi- 
tal. This  was  the  ruin  of  the  spirit  of  the  Interna- 
tional— greed  of  economic  goods ;  in  our  own  coun- 
try it  is  the  "interest"  of  labor;  in  Russia  it  is  max- 
imalism  and  the  sottishness  of  self-lust.  For  the 
spectre  which  the  Bolsheviki  have  raised  is  the 
proper  Nemesis  of  our  hypertrophied  intellectual- 
ism  :  it  is  unreason  and  appetite  incarnate  answering 
reason  and  intellect  discarnate.  The  man  of  the 
body  politic  has  been  deformed  in  all  his  organs  and 
functions  and  his  whole  being  is  in  revolt. 

The  war  is  a  dreadful  purge,  applied  to  a  sufferer 
in  a  desperate  strait.  We  trust  that  it  will  carry 
away  many  ill  humors  from  the  constitution  of  man- 
kind, but  we  know  that  at  the  best  there  must  be  a 
long  period  of  anxious  care  before  we  can  hope  to 
see  civilization  restored  and  hale.  In  the  broadest 
sense  the  problem  of  recovery  is  an  educational  one. 
A  new  ideal  of  human  life  will  have  to  be  discov- 
ered by  those  who  see  truest  the  meaning  of  the 
spiritual  agony.  A  new  schooling  will  have  to  be 
developed  to  enkindle  in  a  fresh  generation  the  light 
of  this  ideal.     What  is  bevond  lies  on  the  knees  of 


234  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  gods.  But  of  this  much,  at  least,  we  may  be 
sure :  that  the  future  will  refuse  to  own  any  mere 
intellectualism,  but  will  demand  in  its  place  (and 
we  need  not  shun  the  word)  a  confessed  spiritual- 
ism. The  education  of  the  future,  in  school  and 
state,  will  instill  with  all  its  power  that  there  can  be 
no  knowledge  without  responsibility,  no  realization 
of  beauty  without  sympathy,  no  discovery  of  good- 
ness without  idealism.  There  must  be  faith  of 
men,  not  in  other  men  for  their  attainment's  sake, 
but  in  the  visioned  Man,  for  his  unattainment's 
sake. 


II 

THE  BALLOT 

THE  ballot  is  the  charter  of  democracy  and  the 
certificate  of  freedom  of  the  democratic  citi- 
zen. The  voter,  in  the  act  of  voting,  proclaims 
that  he  is  a  civic  man,  with  rights  and  responsibil- 
ities, a  legislator,  having  a  voice  in  the  making  of 
the  laws  by  which  he  is  governed.  No  matter  how 
remote  from  the  conduct  of  affairs  his  ordinary 
walk  may  be,  for  the  moment  he  has  entered  into 
the  halls  of  state,  there  to  enact  for  the  public  des- 
tinies. The  afflatus  of  the  booth,  I  might  call  this 
high  emotion, — but  I  would  not  speak  mockingly 
of  it,  for  it  is  just  this  emotion  (in  posse  or  in  actu) 
which  gives  to  the  franchise  its  power  to  make  men 
of  citizens. 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  much  that  is  farcical  in  the 
actual  business  of  voting.  I  recall  well  enough  my 
first  presidential  ballot.  A  man  with  bulging  eyes 
and  a  coarse  mustache  challenged  my  vote  in  a  loud 
mechanical  voice.  I  had  never  seen  the  man  be- 
fore, and  I  became  red  and  angry,  for  I  felt  that  if 
he  had  been  a  gentleman  he  would  have  communi- 
cated his  intentions  to  me  beforehand,  seeing  that 
I  was  duly  registered.     However,  he  turned  away 

235 


236  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

with  a  languid  and  remote  indifference  as  I  swore 
in  my  vote.  Presently,  a  sharp-eyed  chap  from  an- 
other angle  challenged  another  voter,  who  turned 
out,  from  his  confused  answers,  to  be  a  butcher 
residing  in  a  neighboring  state — temporarily,  he 
said.  I  noticed  my  challenger  bristle  up  and  insist 
on  the  butcher's  voting,  for  he  seemed  to  be  in  two 
minds  about  the  matter.  The  fact  is,  it  was  a  close 
ward,  but  the  man  with  the  bulging  eyes  and  coarse 
mustache  won  out. 

That  was  in  the  days  when  voting  was  easy:  an 
eagle  or  a  rooster  surmounting  a  circle  for  the  vot- 
er's cross  made  the  straight  ballot  plain  for  all  and 
inevitable  for  the  ignorant,  and  vastly  simplified 
the  party  machinery.  Since  that  day  I  have  voted 
a  variety  of  ballots  safeguarded  from  the  ignorant 
and  hopelessly  puzzling  to  the  intelligent.  Indeed, 
I  have  often  shivered  at  the  mere  thought  of  the 
wasted  paper  as  the  great  blanket  sheets  were 
handed  out  to  me.  Then  to  the  booth,  and  I  try  to 
catch  in  my  mind  some  vague  clue  that  will  identify 
for  good  or  ill  a  few  in  so  great  a  sea  of  names. 
There  are  various  principles  of  selection  open  to 
the  voter,  after  the  first  few  known  and  deliberate 
choices  have  been  recorded.  There  are  cards  with 
portraits  of  the  candidates  which  have  been  handed 
you  as  you  entered,  and  with  which  the  booth  is  lit- 
tered; and  one  can  judge  something  from  physiog- 
nomy. There  is  the  bruit  of  a  name :  you  have 
heard  a  man  roundly  abused,  and  you  are  sure  there 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  237 

must  be  something  in  him,  good  or  ill  (and  candi- 
dates assure  me  that  an  ill  fame  is  better  than 
none).  Indeed,  there  is  the  form  of  the  name  it- 
self, frequently  indicative.  I  once  lived  in  a  town 
ruled  by  alien-born  citizens,  and  I  made  it  a  princi- 
ple, after  voting  such  names  as  appeared  to  be  of 
American  origin,  to  vote  the  Irish  if  the  French 
happened  to  be  the  majority  of  the  hour  and  the 
L>ench  if  the  Irish  were  in.  Of  course  it  was  fu- 
tile; and  in  my  later  life  I  have  adopted  the  simple 
rule  of  voting  only  for  those  candidates  about  whom 
I  happen  to  have  acquired  some  knowledge. 

A  few  of  my  acquaintances  ("highbrows"  mostly) 
never  vote;  or,  if  they  do,  they  are  ashamed  to  ac- 
knowledge it.  It  is  not  difficult  to  read  their  minds 
— about  what  must  have  been  in  the  minds  of  the 
white  representatives  in  a  freedmen  legislature  of 
the  Carolina  reconstruction.  "Law-makers,"  they 
say  to  themselves,  "judges  of  the  public  policy,  sov- 
ereign discoverers  of  the  good!"  .  .  .  and  they 
lift  their  eyebrows  and  shrug  helplessly.  It  is  an 
intelligible  attitude,  and  it  is  without  vanity; 
indeed,  it  is  reasonable  if  one  believe  that  there  are 
better  and  worse  citizens,  and  that  those  are  better 
who  are  best  tutored  in  the  broad  affairs  of  men. 
But  it  is  an  attitude  that  gets  all  that  makes  it  rea- 
sonable from  the  fantastical  forms  which  the  ballot 
assumes;  not  from  what  the  ballot  should  be,  or  is 
in  principle. 

For  it  is  the  ballot — let  me  repeat — that  is  to  the 


238  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

citizen  the  certificate  of  his  rights  and  the  token  of 
his  responsibiHties  as  a  civic  man;  and  these  are 
things  too  precious  to  mankind  ever  to  be  allowed 
to  suffer  diminution.  Rather,  they  should  be  en- 
larged and  intensified  and  broadened  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  every  citizen,  male  and  female;  for 
rights  and  responsibilities  are  the  friends  of  the 
state  and  the  true  wardens  of  freedom.  But  this 
is  not  to  say  that  our  democracy  has  perfected  the 
use  of  the  ballot;  or,  indeed,  that  the  public  has  yet 
attained  to  a  clear-eyed  perception  of  the  kind  of 
choices  it  can  effectively  determine. 

The  principle  of  the  sound  ballot  is  implicitly 
present  in  the  attitude  of  my  "highbrow"  friends. 
They  justly  feel  that  in  a  society  having  such  com- 
plex needs  as  our  own  and  provided  with  such  deli- 
cate economic  and  moral  instruments  for  the  satis- 
faction of  those  needs  public  policies  should  be  de- 
termined and  public  works  administered  by  the 
most  highly  trained  and  scientific  intelligence  society 
possesses.  They  feel  that  the  statesman  should  be 
a  man  schooled  in  the  history  of  statesmanship  and 
conversant  with  the  possibilities  of  human  nature; 
that  the  directors  of  commerce  should  be  econo- 
mists, the  controllers  of  industrial  enterprise  should 
be  engineers,  the  officers  of  sanitation  physicians, 
and  that  everywhere  in  society  the  spirit  of  science 
should  govern  the  execution  of  public  aft'airs.  If 
modern  intellectualism  be  not  utterly  an  illusion,  if 
it  have  any  value  for  mankind,  the  definition  and 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  239 

satisfaction  of  the  public  will — in  our  age-long 
search  after  the  good — must  surely  be  its  mission. 

Obviously  such  matters  should  not  be  left  to  the 
hazard  of  the  polls.  They  are  tasks  of  the  intellect, 
and  of  intellect  very  highly  trained,  and  they  should 
be  left  to  the  judgment  of  trained  intelligences. 
The  "highbrow,"  if  he  be  an  engineer  or  a  physician 
or  a  lawyer  and  competent  in  his  profession,  is  as 
a  matter  of  fact  a  more  capable  judge  and  deserving 
of  a  more  telling  voice  in  all  matters  where  mechan- 
ics or  medicine  or  law  may  be  made  ministers  of 
the  public  good.  Party  cries  and  platforms  and 
campaign  arguments  are  but  dreary  fustian  to  men 
who  understand  both  their  own  powers  and  their 
own  limitations,  as  most  scientifically  trained  men 
do.  It  is  only  to  the  untrained  commoner  that  they 
appeal,  for  the  untrained  man  deems  himself  to  be 
a  judge  in  all  things — and  most  a  judge  in  public 
affairs.  Clearly  he  is  not  so,  and  clearly  he  ought 
not  to  wield  a  ballot  that  makes  him  appear  so, 
either  to  himself  or  to  others. 

What  then  is  the  true  function  of  the  ballot,  and 
the  principle  of  a  valid  suffrage?  Put  yourself  in 
the  polling  booth  and  ask  after  the  principle  gov- 
erning the  choices  of  which  you  are  least  ashamed 
and  I  think  the  answer  will  be  before  you.  For  it 
is  in  your  choice  of  men,  men  of  whom  through 
some  contact  of  personality  or  idea  you  know  the 
character,  that  you  have  best  served  the  state.  Your 
knowledge  of  policies,  your  sense  of  interest,  have 


240  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

influenced  your  choice  to  an  extent,  but  fundament- 
ally your  choice  is  based  upon  the  feeling  that  here 
is  a  man  who  may  be  trusted  to  preserve  the  integ- 
rity of  the  state  because  of  his  own  integrity.  Your 
ballot  is  a  judgment  of  the  candidate's  character; 
and  this  is  exactly  what  it  should  be,  for  this  is  the 
one  thing  that  you  are  qualified,  as  a  voter,  to  pass 
upon. 

It  is,  in  fact,  the  qualification  that  justifies  uni- 
versal suffrage.  Human  nature  is  complex  and 
many-faceted.  You  and  your  fellow  citizens  are 
showing  yourselves  to  one  another  constantly,  and 
in  a  multitude  of  lights  and  to  multitudes  of  per- 
sons. Not  any  one  of  them  is  a  perfect  judge  of 
you,  nor  you  of  any  one  of  them.  But  if  a  man  be 
put  up  for  public  judgment,  as  a  candidate  is,  then 
his  true  valuation  is  pretty  certain  to  be  expressed, 
— not,  heaven  knows,  by  the  vote  he  may  receive 
per  accidens,  but  by  the  group  of  ballots  cast  by 
those  who  know  him  in  some  personal  fashion.  It 
may  have  been  but  a  glimpse  of  his  face,  a  gesture 
(I  could  never  vote  for  the  man  with  the  bulging 
eyes  and  coarse  mustache)  it  may  have  been  a 
trifling  transaction;  it  may  have  been  but  a  public 
utterance  or  a  portrait;  but  we  human  beings  are 
always  and  instinctively  reading  men's  characters 
in  their  faces  and  in  their  demeanors  as  well  as  in 
their  deeds ;  it  is  the  one  school  in  which  we  are  all 
trained ;  and  the  determination  of  character  through 
a  many-voiced  judgment,  expressing  a  multitude  of 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  241 

impressions,  is  the  true  justification  of  a  wide  suf- 
frage. A  candidate  who  is  judged  not  only  by  his 
business  partners  and  club  associates,  by  his  fellow 
church  members  and  his  underling  clerks,  but  also 
by  his  physician,  by  the  Greek  who  shines  his  shoes, 
by  the  driver  who  meets  his  car  on  the  road,  indeed, 
by  his  wife,  and  the  ladies  he  encounters  at  recep- 
tions,— such  a  candidate  will  be  well  judged;  and 
he  is  likely  to  represent  truly  the  ideal  of  probity 
which  his  community  owns. 

The  fact  is  that  even  with  our  present  bunglesome 
ballot  most  choices  are  made  on  this  basis, — from 
the  presidency  down.  It  is  the  fact  of  personality 
that  determines  political  manoeuvering, — plastering 
our  walls  with  portraits,  giving  car-end  orations, 
and  cinemas  of  the  great  man's  gestures  to  au- 
diences that  care  not  a  whit  for  his  words.  If  mere 
reason  were  to  be  our  judge  of  fitness  all  candidates 
would  be  men  of  the  closet,  preparing  their  briefs 
for  the  public  press  that  they  might  be  meditated  at 
leisure.  But  oratory  is,  and  ever  will  be,  the 
strongest  force  which  a  candidate  can  bring  to  large 
groups  of  voters,  not  primarily  because  of  the  ora- 
tor's skill,  but  because  the  forms  of  his  expression 
are  revelations  of  his  character.  Party  platforms 
— why,  the  very  word  "platform"  proclaims  them 
to  be  (what  political  cynics  love  to  point)  but  de- 
vices for  making  the  rostrum  effective, — give  the 
candidate  themes  upon  which  to  try  his  skill  and 
show  his  zeal ;  but  everybody  knows  that  his  actions, 


242  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

as  an  officer,  will  be  determined  by  the  public  ex- 
igency, not  by  the  plausibility  of  pre-election 
forensic. 

But  if  such  is  the  valid  principle  of  suffrage,  and 
if  the  proper  exercise  of  the  ballot  is  the  choice  of 
representative  men,  how  is  its  proper  working  to  be 
attained? — for  our  present  methods  miss  the  point 
woefully.     To  my  mind  there  is  a  simple  program 
leading  toward  this  desirable  end.     The  number  of 
elections  ought  not  to  be  diminished;  the  number 
of  voters  ought  to  be  extended — at  least,  to  include 
the    women.     But   the   number    of   elective   offices 
should  certainly  be  diminished,   so  that  no  officer 
should  be  chosen  by  ballot  for  a  post  calling  for  tech- 
nical qualification  or  one  in  any  sense  narrowly  ad- 
ministrative ;  such  offices  should  be  filled  by  appoint- 
ment or  through  commissioners  qualified  to  elect. 
Further  the  terms  of  office,  for  commissioners  and 
administrators  and  perhaps  for  legislators,  should 
be  greatly  extended;  for  rapid  rotation  of  officers 
is    only    a    confession    of    political    helplessness. 
Through  such  devices  the  short  ballot  could  be  se- 
cured— ballots  so  short  that  at  each  election  every 
citizen  would  have  a   full  opportunity  to   acquire 
some  direct  knowledge  of  all  the  candidates;  and 
thus     insure     genuine     electoral     judgments.     Of 
course,  mistakes  would  be  made — the  politician  hath 
an  art  that  may  deceive  even  the  many;  but  for  this 
the  recall  is  the  proper  remedy.     The  recall  is  justi- 
fied by  the  same  arguments  that  justify  the  ballot, 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  243 

and  it  fortifies  the  strength  and  meaning  of  the  bal- 
lot. Initiative  and  referendum,  it  may  be  re- 
marked, which  are  so  often  hitched  up  with  the  re- 
call, are  condemned  by  this  same  argument:  they 
stand  for  public  choice  where  the  public  is  not  qual- 
ified, in  the  field  of  ideas  and  executive  politics,  not 
in  the  choice  of  the  good  man. 

Of  course,  there  is  one  policy  which  the  public 
must  decide,  and  to  the  right  decision  of  which  all 
democratic  training  should  be  directed.  This  is  the 
ideal  of  the  good  life,  in  society.  The  adminis- 
trators of  public  affairs  should  be  the  intellectuals 
— the  experts,  who  best  know  how  to  secure  results. 
But  the  legislators,  in  a  final  sense,  must  always  be 
men  who  are  judges  of  the  social  good,  and  that 
means  men  who  are  themselves  good, — for  "the 
good  man  is  the  measure  of  everything,"  as  Aris- 
totle wisely  said.  But  how  else,  save  through  elec- 
toral selection,  is  the  good  man  to  be  found?  In- 
deed, one  may  truly  say  that  the  whole  art  of  demo- 
cratic government  is  the  pragmatic  definition  of  the 
good  through  the  choice  of  representative  men. 
None  of  these  men — not  a  Washington,  not  a  Lin- 
coln,— will  be  perfect,  or  be  the  embodiment  of  the 
perfect  citizen ;  but  the  perfect  citizen  will  gradually 
be  defined  to  all  citizens — as  the  ideal  American  is 
now  partially  defined  by  Washington  and  Lincoln 
—through  this  process  of  selection.  And  to  what 
other  end  does  a  state  exist? 


Ill 

PRO  FIDE 

A  MAN'S  political  education  should  never  be 
completed.  It  was  more  than  mere  antique 
sentiment,  it  was  the  wisdom  of  the  truest  sage,  that 
led  Solon,  when  he  described  to  Croesus  the  happiest 
of  men,  to  make  his  hero — after  he  had  lived  a  vir- 
tuous life,  reared  a  family,  and  enjoyed  an  honor- 
able share  of  what  men  call  goods — end  his  career 
and  fulfill  his  happiness  by  death  in  battle  for  his 
country.  Perfect  citizenship  is  a  thing  not  easily 
to  be  attained;  while  a  man  Hves  he  must  fight  for 
it  (most  of  all  with  his  own  anarchic  soul),  and 
death  must  overtake  him  fighting  for  it;  and  not 
until  he  has  fallen  can  his  fortune  be  accounted  and 
the  final  credit  set  to  his  estate. 

In  a  certain  broad  and  true  sense  the  bestowal  of 
the  ballot  is  a  recognition  of  this  fact.  The  ballot 
is  very  properly  called  a  weapon  and  an  election  a 
battle;  in  the  possession  of  the  ballot  there  is  a  de- 
fensive safety,  and  in  the  exercise  of  the  vote  a 
military  responsibility  demanding  an  alert  mind  and 
an  eye  unwaveringly  set  on  the  good  of  the  state. 
The  ballot  is  not  a  security  that  can  be  put  in  a 
safety  deposit  and  draw  comfortable  interest;  its 

245 


246  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

employment  is  its  preservation.  This  means  that 
he  to  whom  it  is  committed  must  be  relentlessly  in 
training,  learning  through  use  the  better  mastery 
of  his  citizen's  rights  and,  like  a  surgeon  or  a  sol- 
dier or  a  man  of  law,  improving  his  skill  with  prac- 
tice— which  can  only  signify  practice  of  civic  judg- 
ment in  that  study  of  human  nature  and  choice  of 
good  men  v/hich  is  the  true  life  of  a  democracy. 
Such  a  process  is  necessarily  educational,  and  it  is 
the  great  virtue  of  democracy  that  it  recognizes  no 
finished  men — your  perfect  valet,  for  example,  or 
hussar,  or  beau — and  no  classes  save  citizens,  active 
or  preparing;  and  both  of  these  are  in  process  of 
education. 

Of  course,  there  is  a  distinction  between  the  boy 
at  school  and  the  man  at  the  booth.  The  latter  is 
doing  what  the  former  is  preparing  for,  even  though 
we  own  that  the  preparation  must  continue  with  the 
practice.  And  certainly  it  makes  a  huge  difference 
in  the  voter  if  the  boy  has  been  properly  trained. 
For  there  are  principles  which  underlie  the  educa- 
tion of  democrats  in  their  school  days,  just  as  there 
are  principles  governing  the  school  training  of  those 
who  are  to  become  docile  subjects  of  an  autocracy. 
Next  to  the  goose-step  (which  is  but  its  automatic 
display),  the  docility  of  the  German,  schoolboy  and 
subject,  has  come  in  for  our  most  copious  contempt; 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  docility  is  merely  law- 
abidingness,  which  among  ourselves  we  surely  re- 
gard as  a  virtue;  and  if  we  were  to  analyze  our  an- 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  247 

tipathy,  it  would  be  found  to  lie  not  against  a  spirit 
of  obedience  to  law,  but  against  a  spirit  willing  to 
accept  laws  which  it  has  had  no  part  in  making;  in 
brief,  we  are  angry  with  the  Germans  because  they 
are  not  democrats.  Obviously  (and  this  is  what 
we  hold  against  the  German  schoolboy),  it  has  been 
the  design  of  German  education  to  train  anti-demo- 
cratic citizens — primarily,  I  suspect,  by  impressing 
upon  the  youth  that  admiration  for  loyalty,  that 
hero-worship  and  fidelity  to  the  kingly,  which  ap- 
peals so  warmly  to  the  youthful  temperament. 
Their  success  in  this  design  irks  us,  and  the  more 
because  we  have  so  widely  and  uncritically  copied 
German  educational  methods  and  ideals  when  we 
should  have  been  creating  a  schooling  appropriate 
for  a  democracy. 

The  key  to  democratic  education,  like  the  key  to 
democratic  institutions,  is  liberalism.  Along  with 
the  freeman's  ballot,  the  free  public  school  is  the 
great  fortress  of  democracy.  But  the  school  must 
be  not  merely  free  of  access,  it  must  be  free  in 
spirit ;  that  is,  it  must  stand  for  a  liberal  education. 
This  means,  first  of  all,  that  it  must  avoid  early 
specialization.  In  Germany  there  is  one  type  of 
public  school  for  the  child  of  peasant  or  laborer; 
there  are  other  types  for  merchants,  soldiers,  legis- 
lators: the  whole  system  is  based  upon  the  hypoth- 
esis that  the  state  must  be  a  class-state,  each  man 
born  to  his  appropriate  moves  and  from  infancy 
assigned  to  his  possible  squares,  like  the  pawns  and 


248  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

pieces  of  the  chess-board.  America  has  escaped 
this,  luckily,  for  its  primary  schools;  but  overhead 
we  have  been  assiduously  copying  the  Germans,  and 
the  superstructure  is  weighing  more  and  more  heav- 
ily upon  the  common-school  foundations,  tending 
constantly  to  contract  their  native  liberalism.  Un- 
doubtedly, for  that  kind  of  efficiency  which  sees  all 
ends  from  the  beginning,  the  German  method  is 
best ;  but  no  free  state  can  afford  to  foresee  its  des- 
tinies— except  the  one  destiny  of  holding  open  the 
possibility  of  choice. 

Liberalism  means,  then,  primarily  the  training  of 
youth  to  choose  their  own  careers;  which,  in  turn, 
should  mean  a  belated  entrance  upon  a  career.  For 
it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  this  choice  is  to  be  made 
intelligent  by  an  early  smattering  in  many  subjects 
and  arts;  such  a  notion  springs  from  the  fallacious 
confusion  of  means  with  ends,  and  it  is  only  knowl- 
edge of  ends  that  can  make  choice  intelligent.  Such 
knowledge  cannot  be  acquired  from  anything  short 
of  a  comprehension  of  the  history  and  organization 
of  society  in  connection  with  a  fair  internal  estimate 
of  the  nature  and  possibilities  of  man.  That  is,  it 
is  knowledge  that  is  possible  only  with  a  certain 
maturity — as  much,  at  least,  as  is  required  of  the 
voter;  and  it  should  be  the  aim  of  a  democracy,  in 
the  interests  of  its  own  perfection,  to  keep  its  youth 
in  the  tutelage  of  liberal  studies  up  to  their  major- 
ities. The  expense  of  such  a  schooling  would  of 
course  be  great;  but  its  returns  (granting  wisdom  in 


EDUCATION  AND  DEAIOCRACY  249 

the  process)  would  be  inestimable.  Further,  if  we 
look  upon  the  schools,  as  we  should  look  upon  them, 
not  as  eleemosynary  burdens,  but  as  part  of  the  re- 
turns which  society  gives  its  citizens,  we  should  find 
in  the  richness  of  their  life  our  reward.  In  no  in- 
stitution is  the  faith  of  a  people  so  honestly  shown 
as  in  its  schools ;  what  a  generation  of  men  is  will- 
ing to  teach  to  its  children  is  the  fairest  measure  of 
what  it  really  believes  in;  and  if  democracy  is  a  part 
of  our  vital  faith,  then  by  every  means  at  our  dis- 
posal our  children  will  be  trained  for  its  preserva- 
tion, which  can  only  be  through  their  comprehen- 
sion of  it. 

The  creation  of  such  a  comprehension  should  be 
the  guiding  principle  of  our  public-school  organiza- 
tion. Not  variety  of  skilled  technicians,  but  hu- 
manistic breadth  of  mind,  is  the  true  token  of  the 
liberal  state.  The  two  things  are  not  incompatible, 
but  they  do  not  necessarily  coexist,  and  it  is  easy  to 
sacrifice  the  second  to  the  cheaper  production  of  the 
first  (as  Germany  shows,  and  as  we,  alas!  are  in 
peril  of  showing) .  We  must  face  the  fact  that  de- 
mocracy is  dearly  bought  and  dearly  maintained, 
and  that  its  liberalism  is  a  kind  of  delicate  oscilla- 
tion of  the  soul  which  can  be  preserved  from  fatal 
overthrow  only  by  an  eternal  gymnastic,  for  which 
no  training  is  too  precious. 

If  we  ask  what  should  be  the  form  of  this  train- 
ing, how  our  schools  can  be  made  liberators  of  the 
spirit,  fosterers  of  democratic  citizenship,  we  need 


250  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

not  go,  for  our  programme,  beyond  what  is  already 
stated.  For  we  have  said  that  the  youth  of  the  land 
are  to  be  educated  to  become  choosers  of  their  own 
careers,  and  this  means  choosers  of  the  whole  life 
that  they  are  to  live,  private  and  public :  they  are 
to  be  taught  statesmanship  in  that  final  sense  in 
which  the  statesman  is  the  discoverer  of  the  good 
of  which  human  nature  is  capable.  Each  genera- 
tion of  men  must  make  of  its  heirs  a  generation  of 
discoverers  of  the  good  (not  easeful  spendthrifts 
of  their  fathers'  fortunes)  :  so  only  may  men  remain 
noble. 

As  sought  concretely,  this  object  is  not  beyond 
attainment.  Man  is  by  nature  limited.  He  is  an 
animal  with  simple  appetites  and  few  senses,  whose 
satisfactions  are  the  chore  of  our  technical  skills — 
engineerings,  medicinings,  purveyings.  He  is  also 
a  spirit,  limited  in  his  spiritual  nature :  for  there  are 
just  three  forms  of  the  good,  in  a  final  sense,  of 
which  he  has  inner  apprehension,  and  these  are  the 
goodness,  truth,  the  goodness  of  beauty,  and  the 
goodness  of  virtue  or  nobility  of  character.  Edu- 
cators should  be  thinking  of  these  forms  of  the 
good,  to  which  studies  are  the  means,  when  they 
seek  to  liberate  the  soul  of  youth;  and  in  the  light 
thereof,  surely  they  could  simplify  their  scholastic 
machinery.  For  we  are  constantly  losing  the  end 
of  education  in  our  absorption  with  its  means,  for- 
getting that  all  that  is  harmonious  and  beautiful  in 
human   progress    (art   and   science   and   statecraft 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  251 

alike)  comes  from  the  supple  and  simple  adaptation 
of  means  to  ends  conceded  to  be  good — from  the 
law  of  parsimony,  which  is  the  key  to  all  honest  dis- 
cipline. Or,  briefly,  what  can  compare  with  mathe- 
matics as  giving  inevitably  a  perception  of  truth 
and  error?  What  betters  our  imaginations  of 
beauty  more  than  beautiful  poetry  or  noble  prose? 
What  criticism  of  the  virtues  of  one's  own  soul  is 
more  capable  than  is  admiration  for  the  ideal  man 
as  the  history  of  human  deeds  and  of  men's  utmost 
desires  has  portrayed  him  ?  The  means  to  all  these 
are  as  free  as  the  art  of  printing — plus  the  little 
sacrifice  of  time  which  we  should  give  for  our  de- 
mocracy's sake. 

So  giving,  with  a  rounded  understanding  of  the 
meaning  of  liberalism,  we  may  escape  falling  into 
the  fallacy  of  the  past  three  centuries  of  European 
civilization,  which  have  cultivated  the  technical  in- 
telligence of  man  at  the  cost  of  the  liberal  and  spir- 
itual, and  have  brought  us  to  the  dread  pass  of  to- 
day. Rather,  thinking  of  truth  and  beauty  and  no- 
bility, we  should  be  ever  portraying — since  these 
are  the  essence  of  our  humanity — the  form  and  fea- 
tures of  the  ideal  citizen,  the  hero  and  king  of  a 
democratic  society. 

For  the  Germans  are  not  wrong  in  holding  before 
the  eyes  of  their  youth  the  image  of  a  heroic  Ger- 
man and  bidding  them  be  loyal  to  him.  All  great 
nations  have  been  built  up  in  character  and  soul  by 
the  images  of  heroes — such  a  one  as  Achilles  or 


252  LETTERS  TO  TEACHERS 

Roland  or  Arthur  or  Siegfried.  Our  distaste  for 
German  schooling  should  not  be  that  it  makes  idols 
of  its  heroes,  but  that  it  confuses  unheroic  prince- 
lings with  the  heroic — the  Crown  Prince  medalled 
as  Siegfried  is  an  example.  Democracy,  too,  must 
have  its  hero — perhaps  a  composite  of  its  noblest, 
as  we  Americans  make  a  kind  of  composite  ideal  of 
Washington  and  Lincoln.  All  liberal  education 
should  be  directed  to  the  delineation  of  such  a  na- 
tional hero,  whose  portrait,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
could  never  be  completed;  it  would  grow  in  stateli- 
ness  with  each  new  achievement  of  the  humane 
spirit  and  with  each  renewed  participation  in  its 
character.  Liberal  culture,  indeed,  can  only  mean 
that  this  character  of  the  ideal  citizen  is  in  some  de- 
gree manifested  in  all  citizens;  and  the  true  mean- 
ing of  equality  in  society  is  but  the  common  possi- 
bility of  men  to  share  in  such  salvation. 

If  we  would  seek  example,  we  need  only  turn  to 
the  greatest  of  all  democratic  movements  in  human 
history.  For  the  living  heart  of  Christianity  is 
that  simple  faith  in  the  redeemableness  of  the  com- 
mon man  which  Jesus  made  the  prime  article  of  its 
faith.  In  a  direct  and  unavoidable  sense  the  soul 
of  all  that  is  Christian  in  Christendom  is  the  Imago 
Christi.  Through  this  image  an  ecclesia  of  the 
spirit  has  been  created  which,  with  all  defects,  is 
still  the  noblest  of  human  gains.  It  is  an  image  of 
faith,  faith  in  an  ideal  character  gifted  with  per- 
ception of  the  ideal  good;  and  upon  faith  of  no 


EDUCATION  AND  DEMOCRACY  253 

Other  type  can  any  true  democracy  grow  or  be  made 
secure.  For  in  a  political  as  in  the  ecclesiastical 
democracy  the  fight  is  never  ended  while  life  lasts, 
and  only  unto  the  departed  can  the  final  credit  be 
set  to  their  estate. 


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